Aftermath
by ellameno
Summary: {Sequel to The Patroller and the Thief} Ten weeks have passed since Ingrid's undercover operation and the more time that passes, the stranger she acts. This worries Fillmore, especially when it starts affecting her performance on the job.
1. Louder than Words

**It's good to be back, guys. Again, I am so incessantly sorry for taking over three friggin' years to get this done. These last few years have been really hard for me. I won't bore you with the details but I have been working long and hard for these past weeks to get this finished for you guys. I owe you… big time.**

 **I can't thank you guys enough for your understanding and your follows and support. It means the world to me… Thank you for sticking by me. I really hope you aren't disappointed. Updates will work just like they did for** **The Patroller and the Thief** **. I'll post once a week until it's finished. Please review and let me know what you think! I'm so excited to hear from you all.**

 **Also, just a disclaimer: the photo cover credit goes to docolucci of deviantart. I stumbled across it on google while trying to figure out what I should have as a cover and I loved this. Go check them out if you want. Their stuff is pretty legit.**

 **Without further ado, I present to you…** **Aftermath** **.**

 **xXxXx**

 **Prologue**

 **xXxXx**

Ingrid shot out of bed as the recurring nightmare woke her once more, stumbling to the floor as she bolted from under the blankets. She stared down at her right hand at the fresh red scar beaming across her pale palm, which was throbbing along with the rapid beat of her heart. A bead of sweat dripped down the side of her face and she wiped it away with a trembling hand. She stared at the bed in front of her as if she averted her eyes, it would turn into some sort of monster. The red digits on her clock next to her bed read 2:43; only forty-five minutes after she had glanced at it before she finally falling asleep.

Her knees started to buckle and she let gravity take her to the ground as he held her stomach, silently willing the churning to cease.

 _Take it easy, Third._

She put a hand to her forehead as her pulse started to return to normal. She struggled to catch her breath, pushing the traumatized images from her nightmares to the back of her mind.

 _You can't keep doing this, Ingrid._

She placed her hands on her knees and began to anxiously rub her thighs with shaking hands as the memory of the night when she was at _his_ mercy played back frame by frame behind her eyes. She remembered his rough, calloused hands and the way he lustfully spoke to her and every word that still haunted her.

"… _the last thing I want is for you to feel like you can't come and talk to me."_

Her partner's voice rang inside of her head as she rocked nervously back and forth, quietly debating whether she should tell him what was happening to her.

Maybe.

 _No way!_ Ingrid's subconscious refused. _What's he going to do? Say something profound to make it all miraculously go away? Worse comes to worse, you'll need professional help. Not some insightful speech._

Ingrid sighed and ran a shaky hand through her tangled, sweat-dampened hair. Her heart pounded with the mere thought of revealing to her best friend that she thought she was going insane.

" _Ingrid, you know I'm here for you."_

"I know," Ingrid muttered, standing to her feet and walking unsteadily towards the door, suddenly desperate for a shower.

 _But you can't help me,_ she thought.

Why burden him with something he can't fix?

 **xXxXx**

 **Chapter One – Louder than Words**

 **xXxXx**

Cornelius Fillmore walked up the second floor stairs of X High School on Monday morning with a gas station coffee in one hand, a chemistry folder in the other, and a confident stride in his step.

The sixteen-year-old Safety Patrol officer was one of the best on the Force; he was an expert undercover operative. His cool demeanor hid the fact that he had a churning, unsteady feeling in his gut that made his strong heart turn anxious and his mind alert with activity. He was paranoid – sometimes to the extreme, he would admit that – but he trusted his instincts more than anything else. They never steered him wrong, not even during his darkest days.

Fillmore's attentive eyes fell on a boy in a black hoodie taking refuge in a dark corner down the hall. His shoulders were hunched and his eyes were glued to the smartphone in his hand. As if on cue, he seemed to notice that he was being watched – he looked up and met the patroller's eyes, shoved the phone in his pocket, and walked briskly in the opposite direction.

Fillmore's stomach lurched, but before he could act on the gut feeling, his eyes caught someone else. A girl in a thin black sweater, black skinny jeans, and sleek, black combat boots was staring at the vending machine in front of her. Her hand was propped at the top of the machine and she was oblivious to the officer watching her from across the hall.

The ache in Fillmore's stomach worsened as he stared at her. He wasn't sure why but something about the girl seemed off to him. He approached her and stood beside her and for a moment he could have sworn he saw her muttering to herself.

"Ingrid?"

His partner jumped, her hand falling from the machine and her head snapping towards him.

"Fillmore!" she exclaimed, failing to hide the shock from her emerald eyes and the faint blush creeping towards her pale cheeks.

"Good morning to you too," he greeted with his signature half smile, ignoring the uneasiness in his gut at his partner's jumpiness. Ingrid was normally so attentive; he could hardly ever sneak up on her. "You know, you don't have to use your Jedi-mind powers to get food from the machine. You can just punch in the numbers and it'll give you what you want."

Ingrid smirked and reached down into the machine to pull out a nutrition bar. "Too late," she said, holding it up. "Already did." Fillmore's brain kicked into overdrive.

"And I missed it?" Fillmore asked, feigning shock. He noticed the subtle bags under her eyes which dulled their usually vibrant green color. "Dawg! I miss all the good stuff, don't I?"

Ingrid rolled her eyes as she picked up her black satchel and slung it over her shoulder. "Oh please, like something could ever get past you and that big head of yours."

"Feisty this morning, aren't we?"

"Don't push your luck, belt."

The tone of her voice was a little more monotonous than usual; it was raspy, tired and burdened. But Fillmore grinned as they turned and walked in sync towards the Safety Patrol headquarters down the hall.

"But that's why you keep me around, isn't it?" he asked.

"No," she denied, glancing up at him with a sly smirk. "I just can't seem to get rid of you."

He grinned at her snarkiness; a genuine glimpse of his real partner. She might have been off, but she was still in there somewhere. "Ouch, Third. Thanks."

She shrugged. "Don't mention it."

Fillmore chuckled as they approached the headquarters while he developed a plan in his head. _Maybe Ingrid is just tired or something; she's had a long couple of weeks,_ Fillmore's conscience told him.

But his gut told him otherwise.

Fillmore reached in front of Ingrid toward the door handle and placed a hand on her back. She flinched as his hand made contact and her eyes flickered with panic, but only for a moment. The moment passed and all visible sign of insecurity fled with it as he opened the door and stepped aside for Ingrid. Although, her body was rigid as she continued through the door with a mumbled "thank you" as if Fillmore didn't notice.

But he did.

xXxXx

Ingrid sat down at her desk and tried to act natural by digging into the trail mix nutrition bar as her stomach growled with hunger and anticipation. She would have loved to believe Fillmore hadn't noticed her anxious behavior in the hallway, but she knew that he was smarter than that. She also knew that no one should ever underestimate someone like Fillmore; he had always been extremely attentive when it came to people and most especially those he cared about. He silently studied people and picked up on every detail, big and small. It was what made him such a great detective.

In a nutshell, he always knew when people were hiding something, no matter the lengths they went to hide it or how good they were at doing it. (As much as he would hate her if she said it out loud, she knew he could make an excellent psychologist someday if for some godforsaken reason being a detective didn't pan out.)

Fillmore sat down in his desk next to her, pulled open his middle left hand drawer and set his folder inside.

"So what's with the morning snack?" he asked her, leaning back in his swivel chair and spun his chair back and forth with his feet. He grabbed the foam basketball from his desk and began tossing it back and forth in his hands as he waited patiently for her answer.

 _Okay Third, just like you rehearsed._ "I had a late start this morning," she started, "and consequently had to miss breakfast."

Fillmore raised his eyebrows and momentarily stopping spinning in place. "Ingrid Third had a late start?" he asked in disbelief.

She let out a sheepish and slightly uncharacteristic giggle as she expertly hid the blush rising to her cheeks. "Yeah, I know. But every so often, the power lines decide to stop working in the middle of the night and shut off alarm clocks."

She actually spent the entire night tossing and turning and trying to avoid the nightmares. She didn't remember turning off her alarm clock to get up, but by the time her father came to get her out of bed, it was 7:29 – just over an hour _after_ she was supposed to get up. According to her watch, she was out of the house and flying towards the school approximately seven-point-three minutes later.

"And you're telling me your internal alarm clock took the morning off too?" he joked.

She shrugged, "Hey, it happens."

Fillmore chuckled as his desk phone rang and he sat up to answer it with his elbows on the table. "Fillmore." Ingrid bit into her bar and started up her computer. _Saved._

 _Get yourself together, Ingrid,_ she started to think to herself. _You should have just screamed, "Hey, something's wrong with me, save me."_

 _I just can't control it,_ she argued to herself. _Everything's been freaking me out: the coffee pot beeping this morning, Dad knocking on my door to wake me up._

 _This can't go on, Ingrid._

"Ingrid?"

Ingrid looked over at her partner, spiraling back down to a dismal Earth. He had hung up the phone and was looking at her with a concerned expression in his dark eyes.

"What?" she asked.

He nodded towards the snack bar in her hand. "You were staring at that bar like it was gonna choke you or something."

She looked back down at the half-eaten bar in her hand for a brief moment before she shook her head in a futile attempt to clear her mind. "Wow, I must be really tired."

"Or really hungry," he quipped, which caused Ingrid to smile. "Are you okay?"

A split second debate in Ingrid's head spit out her excuse. "Yeah, I'm fine," she said and tried to keep her cool. "Why-"

The door to Vallejo's office swung open to reveal the man himself. "Fillmore! Third!" They both turned their heads toward the Commissioner with raised eyebrows.

"What's up?" Fillmore asked.

Vallejo only jerked his head towards his office in response. "Get in here."

Silence enveloped the squad room at the grave tone of their boss and all eyes fell on the duo. Fillmore and Ingrid shared a quick look of curiosity before Ingrid set her breakfast down, her stomach growling in protest, and they both rose from their chairs. They walked over to the segregated room with all of the eyes in the room following them.

Vallejo noticed this – he sent a stern glare towards all in the room and shouted, "What are you staring at? Get back to work!"

The chatter in the room resumed as Fillmore and Ingrid entered the office and Vallejo shut the door behind them. "Take a seat, guys."

"What's up, Vallejo?" Ingrid asked as she sat down in one of the leather chairs and Fillmore sat down in the identical chair to her left. Vallejo sighed and ran a hand over his face. There was a tense pause that hung in the air before he spoke.

"The teachers have been receiving strange calls," he began cryptically. "The voice is different each time, but we have evidence that the voice is digitally altered, so we think each call is from the same guy."

Ingrid raised an eyebrow. "How do you know that?"

"The board issued taps on the phones to try and get to the bottom of the issue and some of the calls were recorded," Vallejo replied as he sat down on the edge of his desk and shoved his hands in his pockets. "We had Tehama scan them and she figured out that whoever it is, they've been using a voice modifier. Maybe from an app on an iPhone or a Droid of some kind."

Fillmore backtracked when he heard Tehama being mentioned. "Okay, back up. So how many people know about this?"

"At this moment," Vallejo started, crossing his arms, "just the Board, us three, and Tehama. We're trying to keep this quiet because some of the stuff he's saying is creeping out some of the teachers and we're not sure how the student body would react." At this point, Vallejo seemed to be getting nervous. He began to slowly pace at the front of his desk while looking down at the ground. "The thing is we don't know for sure what message this guy is trying to get across and if we should consider him a threat to the school or not."

The serious nature of their comrade's tone was setting off a dozen alarms in Ingrid's head. "A threat? What's the guy saying?"

Vallejo paused.

"Mrs. Evans, the AP English teacher, recognized some of the stuff the perp was saying. According to her, he's using references to Shakespeare's material and it's some pretty cryptic stuff." Fillmore instantly looked over at Ingrid with a mischievous gleam in his eyes, but Ingrid spoke before he could make a snarky comment.

"Don't you dare give me that look, Fillmore," she quipped as she half-heartedly glared at the wall across from her. Vallejo raised an eyebrow.

"Am I missing something here?"

Fillmore made a showy hand-gesture towards Ingrid and said, "You're staring at the Shakespeare expert right here, baby." Ingrid only rolled her eyes.

"Just because I like Shakespeare doesn't mean I'm an expert."

"You're right," he admitted, "but having photographic memory and an entire shelf in your bedroom devoted to his plays and poems just might."

A ghost of a smirk on Vallejo's face eased some of the tension that had been building in the room ever since the partners entered. "Nice."

On the inside, Ingrid was thrilled that they weren't noticing her anxious behavior and instead were poking fun at her strange interests. But on the outside, she put on a show of phony annoyance both Vallejo and Fillmore saw straight through. They knew she took pride in her literature.

"Well, since you're an expert, maybe you could help us shed some light on all this," Vallejo told her, getting back down to the real business.

"What's he saying?"

Vallejo reached behind him and grabbed a tape recorder and held it in front of him. He pressed the play button and the tape started to play. Mr. Goodfairer, X High's most popular history teacher, answered the telephone.

" _Mr. Goodfairer."_

A monotonous, gravelly voice responded to him. " _All good people, you that thus far have come to pity me-"_

" _Who is this?"_ Mr. Goodfairer interrupted.

The caller didn't stop speaking, just rose his voice to be heard over the man interrupting him, "- _hear what I say and then go home and lose me._ "

" _I just might,"_ the teacher commented, expertly masking his nerves with humor. " _Mind if I go ahead and lose you now?_ "

The perp ignored his witty interruption and continued on with his message, speaking louder now. _"I have this day received a traitor's judgment and by that name must die."_

Then the perp hung up.

"Any ideas?" Vallejo asked, pausing the tape and looking back at Ingrid who had a finger against her temple. She searched her photographic memory for the line.

"That's a quote from _Henry VIII_."

Fillmore smirked. "Isn't that your favorite one?"

Ingrid rolled her eyes and continued, leaving Fillmore chuckling next to her, "Buckingham was on trial because he was suspected and wrongly accused of conspiring to kill King Henry," Ingrid explained, looking back up at her comrades.

Fillmore raised his eyebrows. "You're not telling me you actually understand that stuff, are you?" he asked in utter shock.

"If you understand the format of the Old English language it's actually not that hard. Words then don't mean the same things as they do now," she explained to him as both of the boys gawked at her. "Of course, anyone who takes the time to read enough of the material doesn't have to be an expert to get the main idea of a passage. They can take the theme and the dialogue and come to their own conclusions."

Vallejo crossed his arms, sent her a stern yet comical look and said, "And for those of us who _don't_ take the time?"

Ingrid rolled her eyes. "Buckingham says to anyone who cares to listen to him even though they'll probably just leave and forget about him and what he had to say. He was being wrongly accused and was being executed for it."

Vallejo shrugged. "That's all you needed to say. This next one's the most recent one; it took place about seven o'clock this morning."

The tape started again, with Mrs. Cornwallis, one of X's woodwork teachers, answering the phone.

" _Hello?"_

The voice that answered was different than the first call. It was edited to sound extremely high pitched.

" _Yet see, when these so noble benefits shall prove not well disposed, the mind growing once corrupt, they turn to vicious form, then times more ugly than ever they were fair."_

" _Who is this?"_

" _This man so complete, who was enrolled 'mongst wonders – and when we, almost with ravished list'ning, could not find his hour of speech a minute."_

" _What?"_

" _He, my lady, hath into monstrous habits, put the graces that once were his, and is become as black as if besmeared in hell."_

Vallejo stopped the tape and looked back at Ingrid. "Thoughts?"

Ingrid nodded. " _Henry VIII_ , act one, scene two. The king is telling Katherine that he agrees that Buckingham is out of favor, but that he also knows that powerful positions lead to corruption."

Fillmore chipped in, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. "So how are those quotes related?"

Ingrid shrugged and shook her head as she tried to make the connection, but she couldn't quite focus long enough to connect the dots. "I don't think they are, really. They're both from _Henry VIII_ , both about Buckingham…" She paused and tried to find any more connections between the monologues.

Vallejo raised his eyebrows in slight disappointment he couldn't hide. "That all you got, Third?"

Ingrid shrugged and rubbed her face with her hands and rested her elbows on her knees as her brain scrambled with facts and speculations and she fought off the flashbacks that threatened to distract her. _Come on Ingrid, wake up!_

The whole time, Fillmore had been wary of Ingrid's behavior from the corner of his eye. As Ingrid and Vallejo exchanged information, Fillmore had only caught the main ideas of their conversations as he watched her. She was distracted and edgy. Jumpy and dazed. There was something big on her mind, but he couldn't think for the life of him what it was.

"Well," Ingrid straightened up and looked back at Fillmore, "they're both about Buckingham. He was a guy in high power being framed for something he didn't do. We're probably looking for a guy who's been accused of something but doesn't consider himself guilty of the crime. Has a grudge against the teachers, maybe?" she speculated and returned her gaze to Vallejo. "Are there any others?" she asked, but her boss shook his head.

"Those two were the only ones that have been recorded, but the teachers said it's been going on for a while." Vallejo crossed his arms and leaned against the front of his desk. "They were rare and spotty at first, but the windows between each call kept shrinking. When one teacher brought it up, everyone else opened up. They narrowed it down themselves that the first one happened about seven weeks ago."

Fillmore finally chipped in. "And which teacher was that?"

Vallejo reached behind him and grabbed an abnormally large manila file, looked through it and found his answer. "Ms. Childs, the French teacher in the east wing."

Fillmore and Ingrid shared a serious look as they both thought the same thing.

"I think we should pay Ms. Childs a visit," Ingrid said with a smirk.

Fillmore sent her the same smile and they stood in sync, moving to leave.

"Not so fast, Fillmore," Vallejo said, stopping both of the patrollers in their tracks. Fillmore raised an eyebrow.

"Something else, man?"

Vallejo nodded back towards the chair Fillmore had been sitting in. "I wanna talk to you for a second."

After a pause, Fillmore looked over at his partner.

"Go ahead Ingrid," Fillmore reassured her with a nod. "I'll meet you outside."

"All right."

Ingrid turned around and walked out of the office with a nod and shut the door quietly behind her.

Fillmore turned back to Vallejo who was making his way over to the shades.

"What's up, Vallejo?"

Vallejo remained silent. With a lone finger, he pulled down a slat in the window shades to peer out into the squad room. Fillmore eyed him curiously while his nerves slowly began to build in the center of his gut.

Vallejo scanned the squad room, past the evidence locker Anza was exiting, past Tehama at her desk who was trying to get O'Farrell's camera out of her face, and his eyes finally stopped on Ingrid, who was now sitting at her desk finishing her meager breakfast.

"How's everything going, Fillmore?" he finally asked, letting go of the slat and turning to face his comrade.

Fillmore raised an eyebrow. "What?"

Vallejo walked over to his desk and leaned against it, shoving his hands in his pockets. "How are you?"

Fillmore shot him a confused look, but Vallejo gave him a sincere, inquisitive stare which prompted Fillmore to ask, "What do you mean?"

Vallejo shrugged, his dark brown eyes encouraging Fillmore to respond. "How's life treating you?"

Fillmore crossed his arms as he furrowed his eyebrows, but humored him by answering, "I can't really complain much. Why?"

Vallejo nodded, looking down at his red and white striped sneakers. "Good, I'm glad to hear that." His eyes darted back and forth to each shoe as he tried to determine what to say next. A slight pause fell on the two friends before Vallejo looked back up at Fillmore.

Fillmore couldn't have missed the glint of worry in Vallejo's eyes when he said, "So how's Ingrid holding up?"

So Vallejo noticed, too.

Fillmore nodded – a signal to Vallejo that he understood his message – and took a deep breath. "She hasn't said anything to make me think otherwise."

"Well, you know better than anyone that actions speak louder than words, Fillmore."

"Oh, I've noticed."

Vallejo sighed and rubbed a hand over his eyes. "Can you do me a favor, Fillmore?"

Fillmore nodded. "Anything."

Vallejo looked back up at him with an anxious look hiding in his tired brown eyes. "Keep a real close eye on her."

Fillmore headed for the door and said before opening it, "Already ahead of you, Vallejo." He shut the door behind him and his sights instantly fell onto his partner who had just finished her snack bar and was throwing away the wrapper into the trash can.

 _Oh Ingrid,_ he thought as he started to approach her. _I wish you would just tell me what's wrong._

xXxXx

"I just can't think of a connection, Ingrid," Fillmore said, swiping his Safety Patrol ID in front of the "maintenance only" elevator's barcode scanner. It then beeped and the light on the top turned green and Fillmore then pressed the down button. He and Ingrid just left Ms. Childs' room on the third floor of the west wing. She had nothing new to say that the reports didn't already include: Shakespeare poetry, manipulated voice, lasted less than a minute to avoid being traced. Nothing new, nothing helpful.

Fillmore looked back down at his partner, who had her hands in her pockets and was staring down at her feet, deep in thought.

"Maybe we're looking at it wrong," she finally replied as the elevator opened. The duo stepped inside and Fillmore pressed the second floor button, shooting his partner a quizzical look.

"What do you mean?"

She looked up at him. As the day had gone on and the two focused on the case at hand, he saw some light return to Ingrid's tired green eyes. Moments passed where he noticed her start to slip again, but she had always been good at dropping everything in her personal life to focus on a case; those moments never lasted long.

Nothing worried him more.

"We've been trying to profile the caller the whole time, right?" she asked as the elevator doors shut, closing them in as it descended.

Fillmore nodded. "Go on."

"Maybe we shouldn't be focusing so much on the caller so much as we should be his targets," she pointed out, crossing her arms and looking back down at her shoes in thought. "But what do the teachers who've been targeted have in common?"

"Dawg," Fillmore said, putting a hand on his chin. He looked back down at her. "Subject, maybe?"

Ingrid cocked an eyebrow and looked up at Fillmore humorously. "History, woodwork, and French?" The lift came to a halt.

The boy shrugged and plastered a faint smirk on his face as the aluminum doors opened. "Well, we could be looking for a common student," he defended, letting Ingrid step out first and they made their way back towards the HQ. "Maybe a student with a past grudge?"

Ingrid raised an eyebrow. "You don't think a seasoned delinquent would really make a rookie mistake like that, do you?"

"Probably not, but it's a start," he replied. He started saying something else when Ingrid heard someone talking around the corner. She held up a hand and stopped in her tracks while Fillmore fell silent beside her. A boy's hushed voice wandered down the hall towards them.

"The patrol's picked up on us already. What do you want me to do, man?" he asked. The perp's sneakers squeaked as he paced the hallway, the sound echoing lightly through the corridors. Fillmore and Ingrid shared a look of confusion before Fillmore signaled towards the voice. Ingrid nodded and pointed towards the staircase behind them. "What do you mean stick with the plan?" Fillmore nodded and quietly walked towards the stairs, aiming to go around and corner the boy. Ingrid walked quietly and slowly towards the corner of the hallway, backing up against the wall.

"What plan?" the boy continued. "I don't even know what the plan _is!_ "

Ingrid rested against the wall for another brief moment, trying to figure out what her plan of action should be.

"And what if they catch me? What the hell am I supposed to do then?"

Ingrid turned the corner and crossed her arms. "Cooperate."

The perp had his back to her and his face covered with a black hooded jacket, but his face didn't need to be seen to reveal the panic in his shoulders.

"Do I even need to say freeze?" Ingrid asked, but the boy ran off in the other direction.

 _Why do they always run?_ She thought, inwardly groaning as she bolted after the suspect.

The perp flew towards the corner with the patroller hot on his heels. He ran into a trash can, almost knocking it over, and sprinted farther away down the hallway, turning the corner and disappearing from sight.

 _Damn, he's fast,_ she thought. _But so am I._ She ran around the corner but something abruptly launched into her stomach, knocking her back a couple of feet. She cried out, gasping for air and clutching her stomach, as the perp came out from the shadows again and faced her.

He lunged for her, grabbing her by the waist and throwing her to the ground, pinning her with two hands to the chest. She didn't cry out; she wouldn't dare let him feel the satisfaction of causing her pain. She balled her right hand into a fist and launched it at his face. He shouted as her fist hit his cheekbone.

His moment's pause gave Ingrid the advantage. With a grunt of effort, she pushed him off her and rolled him over on his stomach and got on top of him.

"You're making a mistake," he mumbled into the tiled floor as she grabbed a pair of zip tie handcuffs from her back pocket, ignoring the throbbing in her knuckles.

"Says the kid skipping class, using a phone during school hours, and running from a patrol officer," she chided, slipping the cuffs over his wrists and tightening them. She felt around his pockets for the phone he was using, but it wasn't there. She stood up and turned him over on his back, straddling him and holding the struggling teen down by his shoulders.

"Speaking of that, where is that phone, huh?" she asked, removed his hood and revealed his long dark brown hair and slightly freckled face. But while his tone was fierce and angry, his icy blue eyes were darting around them nervously.

She grabbed his face with one hand and made him face her. "Hey, focus, kid." The boy glared at her, his bushy eyebrows knitting together in irritation as she asked him again. "What did you do with the phone?"

He licked his chapped lips nervously, but said sternly, "You're the belt, _you_ find it."

"I don't really think you're in a position to be giving orders," Ingrid told him, shooting him a fiery glare.

He seemed to relax as he thought for a moment and looked down at her body. "I don't know," he started, smiling sadistically up at her. "I kind of like the position I'm in."

It took her a moment to realize what he was insinuating.

" _Just relax."_

" _Wade, stop!"_

" _You protect yourself by any means necessary."_

Ingrid grabbed the boy by the collar of his dark hoodie and, with strength she didn't realize she had, she lifted him up and slammed him down on the ground. The boy cried out as his head bounced off of the tile floor.

"You want to say that again?" she asked, raising her voice as her anxiety returned, overwhelmed by her photographic memory.

"Whoa, Ingrid!"

Fillmore ran up from behind her and grabbed her around the waist, pulling her back. She cried out from the pain in her stomach, but the pain brought her back. Fillmore had let go of her and was staring at her incredulously.

"Ingrid, what're you doing, girl?" he asked, looking back at the boy writhing on the ground.

" _Just relax."_

Ingrid shook her head, running her hands through her jet black hair and then over her face to wipe away the tears threatening to fall. Fillmore looked back at her. "What's gotten into you?"

The boy on the ground started to sit up. "That chick is crazy, dude!"

Fillmore turned around and walked briskly towards the boy, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him up to his feet. He threw him up against the lockers and growled, "I think you need to watch what you say very carefully, punk."

Ingrid had put a hand on her temple, desperately trying to stop the rewind happening in her head. She looked down the hallway and when her eyes caught the trash can sitting out in the open, her mind snapped.

 _The boy ran into a trash can, almost knocking it over, and sprinted farther away down the hallway._

She slapped herself in the side of her head. "Idiot."

Fillmore turned around. "Huh?"

Ingrid walked quickly down the hallway towards the trash can, her gut throbbing with each step she took, and peered into the trash can.

A cell phone.

 **xXxXx**

 **Thanks so much for reading! I wanted to request that if you do have anything you think I need to re-look at, please let me know. Constructive criticism is always accepted! This has been my first time writing in a very long time so I** _ **am**_ **pretty rusty. Let me know how I'm doing!**

 **I hope you enjoyed! See you next week!**


	2. Fight or Flight

**Whaddya know? I'm updating on time this week! Things are slowing down a little bit so hopefully I won't be too busy to remember to post from now on hehe.**

 **Aftermath** **is getting a lot of views and visits and I'm thrilled! Even if I don't hear from you, just know that I'm paying attention and I'm grateful for every reader. I miss having my stuff out there and interacting with you guys! I'm especially thankful for all the follows and favorites. You guys keep me going!**

 **xXxXx**

 **Chapter Two – Fight or Flight**

 **xXxXx**

After she and Fillmore brought the perp into HQ, Ingrid sat at her desk with a hand lightly pressed against her still-throbbing stomach. She stared at her screensaver and watched the box hit the sides of the screen and bounce around, changing shapes as it hit the sides of the monitor. She stored the sequence inside of her memory, thankful for something monotonous and meaningless to be circuiting her mind instead of something so traumatic.

" _Whenever I see you I just… yearn."_

She shook those images from her head, stood up, and walked briskly towards the quiet room, where officers decompressed after a bad interrogation or a rough case. She was vaguely aware of some of the officers watching her, her friends Tehama and Anza included, so she shut the door behind her. To her satisfaction, the dimly lit room was empty, so she made her way to the small bathroom.

She turned the light on and for the first time that day saw how terrible she looked; despite her attempt to hide how exhausted she was, anyone could still see it in the form of dark circles under her eyes. She had only minimally run a comb through her hair during her scramble to get out the door but, considering how many times she'd run her hands through her hair since the day began, the comb's job had been undone probably hours ago.

She felt Canton running his hands through her hair, grabbing a handful of it, and using it to pull her closer to him. She shuddered, turned on the faucet, and let the icy water pool in her hands before splashing it on her face.

" _Come on, Dee."_

" _Just relax."_

She ran her trembling hands over her face, desperately fighting the memories from resurfacing in her mind.

" _Come on."_

She shook her head again and pressed her palms hard to her temples.

"Shut up," she whispered. He grinned at her, his eyes gleaming. "God, just go away."

Fillmore walked out of the observation room after spending a couple of minutes watching Vallejo process their perp; a junior punk named Adrian Barrow.

He needed to talk to his partner.

He immediately looked towards her desk where he left her only to find her gone. He stopped and looked around the room and spotted Tehama and Anza. Tehama was sitting at her desk staring intently at her computer desk while Anza was watching over her shoulder.

Fillmore threw his hands out at his sides. "Where's Ingrid?" he asked them.

Anza pointed wordlessly towards the quiet room with a thumb, but didn't remove his eyes from the screen. Tehama, however, looked up and waved him over. "Fillmore, I think you need to see this."

Fillmore waved her off and headed towards the quiet room. "Not now, Karen."

"Hey!" she exclaimed. Fillmore stopped in his tracks and glared at her, but she glared right back and pointed at the empty spot beside her desk. "Get over here, pretty boy. Don't you dare make me chase you."

Fillmore sighed but couldn't suppress a smirk. He couldn't remember how it started, but he could never turn her down when she called him that. He walked over to her desk, leaned over her shoulder with a hand on the side of the desk and the other on the back of her chair. "What do you got for me, sweet cheeks?"

"It's the camera footage of your chase," she explained, the ghost of a smirk on her face. She rewound the video and looked at Fillmore, "It might explain a lot." She hit play.

Barrow was pacing the hallway on his cell phone when he abruptly stopped and Ingrid appeared on the screen with crossed arms. He paused but then took off in the other direction with Ingrid slowly catching up to him. He ran into the trash can and turned the corner, but when Ingrid turned the corner to follow, Barrow came back around the corner and launched a fist into her stomach, sending her staggering backwards across the hallway. Fillmore flinched as he watched. He had no idea he'd hit her, and by the looks of it, it definitely wasn't something you'd typically walk away from without difficulty.

After a short struggle, Ingrid got the perp on his back and were exchanging words. She froze for a moment before responding violently. She grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and slammed him on the ground when Fillmore ran up behind her and pulled her off of him. Tehama stopped the tape and both she and Anza were staring at Fillmore, whose nerves were fraying at the seams. Ingrid has never been a violent person…

Not unless she was in danger.

"We think he said something to her that made her angry," Anza told him, shoving his hands in his pockets. "Or judging by the way she's been acting since it happened, maybe something that freaked her out?"

Fillmore stood up straight and walked towards the quiet room once more, but with more urgency. "Thanks guys."

Ingrid felt his lips against hers, his hands explore her body, and her stomach churned with disgust. She took a shaky deep breath, wiped a tear that had fallen from her eye and splashed a little more water on her face. _Why is this affecting you so bad, girl?_ She heard Fillmore chastise her.

Ingrid turned the water off and stared at her reflection in the mirror; her smeared mascara, the cold water dripping slowly down her sullen face, her partner staring at her from the doorway.

She did a double take.

Fillmore stood in the doorway of the bathroom with his hands in his pockets and a worried look on his face. How long he had been standing there, she had no clue. For all she knew, he had followed her in there. She grabbed the towel hanging from the rung to her right and dried her face with it.

"You wanna tell me what happened back there, Ingrid?" he asked softly. She turned around and leaned against the sink, but she wouldn't meet his eyes. She had to get rid of the tears first. She rubbed the smeared makeup from her eyes with the towel and took a deep breath, debating whether she should tell him the truth.

"I don't know," she whispered, twisting the towel tightly in her hands. "I don't even know, Fillmore."

And that was the truth. She hadn't even realized what she was doing until Fillmore had come and pulled her away from Barrow; it was like her memory took total control over her body.

"What did he say to you?" he asked, which snapped her out of her thoughts. She looked up and gave him a questioning look. "When you collared Barrow he said something to you," he elaborated. Ingrid inwardly cursed. _Security footage, Third. Duh._ Fillmore leaned against the doorway and shoved his hands in his pockets. "What was it?"

She shrugged. "He was just being a perv. That's all." _Well, it's half true._

Fillmore smiled the smile he always used to mask disbelief and shook his head. "No, that's not all."

She shrugged again; she knew exactly where he was going, but she forced herself to feign ignorance. "I don't know what else you want me to say, Fillmore."

"The truth, Ingrid!" he told her and threw his hands out. "What's going on with you?"

 _Lie._ "Nothing."

"Don't you dare lie to me, Ingrid!" he exclaimed, pointing out towards the HQ. Ingrid's eyes fell to the floor. "Whatever's going on, it's affecting you out in the field." He paused, trying to meet her eyes, but she wouldn't look up at him. "I'm worried about you."

 _Lie_. She looked up at him. "You don't need to be. I'm fine."

"You say you're fine when you're not."

Ingrid rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I've heard that one before."

The look in Fillmore's dark eyes was fierce but hurt. Ingrid felt her stomach twist into painful knots at the sight, but she couldn't tell him. His irritating hero complex would kick in and he'd do everything he could to try and fix her. But he couldn't help her.

"Girl, why are you shutting me out?"

"Why do you want to know so badly?"

"Because I need to be able to trust you, Ingrid!" Fillmore blurted. Ingrid flinched at his sudden outburst; out of many things she expected him to say, that wasn't even in her top ten. Fillmore continued after pausing to determine what to say. "I need to know you've got my back out there!" Ingrid's heart lurched inside of her chest.

 _He doesn't trust me._

"Ingrid, I-" Fillmore stopped abruptly, putting a hand to his face and another on his hip. "Ingrid, I don't know what you're dealing with but you're not with me." He looked back at her and put his other hand on his hip. "You're distracted, which can lead to mistakes, _serious_ mistakes. I need to know you've got my back."

Ingrid didn't respond, but she couldn't break Fillmore's stare. She strained to keep the lump in her throat from surfacing and to keep the tears from her eyes but she knew if she spoke, she wouldn't be able to keep them from falling. He stepped closer to her and spoke softer. "And if you're in such a bad place where you can't have mine… then I gotta have yours."

She finally looked away from Fillmore and down at her feet.

 _My own partner, my best friend, doesn't even trust me._

A silent tear finally fell from her eye and ran slowly down her cheek.

"I don't know what to do, Fillmore." She didn't dare raise her voice above a whisper; any higher and her entire composure would be compromised. She wouldn't be able to stop.

Fillmore didn't reply. He watched her with fear as another tear fell from her eye. A thousand terrible thoughts ran through his head, making his stomach churn. Whatever was going on, it had Ingrid broken. After all of these years, nothing had _ever_ come close to breaking her. She was made of steel – or so he thought.

Ingrid squeezed her eyes shut, releasing more tears, and she willed herself to stop. _Jesus, Ingrid, pull yourself together!_ She took a deep breath and looked up at Fillmore, ready to start spilling everything.

She had just opened her mouth to speak when the door to the quiet room opened.

A part of Ingrid inwardly sighed with relief, but there was a deeper part of her that screamed to shout at the intruder and scare them away and tell Fillmore everything; it begged her to let it all go. But she wiped away her tears and looked back down at her boots, taking a deep breath to recompose herself.

Fillmore had also visibly deflated. He looked down at the ground and shook his head as Vallejo walked up behind him.

"Hey, we need you guys out here," he told them, but when Fillmore stepped aside to look at him, he saw Ingrid as well and cautiously asked, "Am I interrupting something?"

Ingrid looked up – dry eyes, composure replaced – and asked, "What is it, Vallejo?"

He gave her a wary look before getting back to business. "Barrow wants to talk to you," he explained, not looking away from Ingrid. "Only you."

She raised an eyebrow. "Why me?" She could feel the frustration radiating from Fillmore, who was silently glaring down at his feet. The tension between her and her partner was thick like smoke in the air threatening to choke her.

Vallejo shrugged. "I don't know, but we have to get something out of him. He's the first and only lead we've got on this one." He looked at Fillmore, who had finally looked up to meet Ingrid's eyes.

The expression in his eyes hit her in the chest like a ton of bricks. She had never seen such a look in his eyes before; she couldn't even tell what kind of look it was, which terrified her to the bone. She wondered if she should stay and interview Barrow later. Maybe take a walk with Fillmore and explain herself.

"Guys?"

Ingrid blinked and fell back to Earth, taking in Fillmore's full expression. It was forlorn and disappointed, but he knew her mind was made up, and he understood.

She looked away from him and started to walk out of the bathroom, but reached up and dragged a finger subtly under her eye. She turned to the side to walk past her partner when he tapped her lightly on the elbow.

 _We'll talk later._

As Ingrid walked past him and Vallejo, Fillmore leaned his back against the door frame and rubbed his eyes with one hand. When Ingrid left the quiet room, Vallejo looked at him in shock while turning towards the door.

Fillmore nodded at the file in his hand. "What's that, man?" he asked.

Vallejo held it out to him and said, "Barrow's record." Fillmore took the file from him and opened it up, quickly skimming over the front page for anything that stuck out. "What did I walk into, Fillmore?" Vallejo asked in a hesitant tone while turning to exit the room.

Fillmore shook his head, straightened up, and followed the Commissioner out. "I really don't know, man."

When Ingrid walked out of the quiet room, almost every eye had turned to her, but she kept walking. Either they had heard them shouting or she truly _was_ looking exceptionally terrible today. Most likely both.

Tehama approached her from her left, leaned in towards her and asked in a hushed tone, "Hey, everything okay?"

Ingrid completely ignored the question and kept heading for the interrogation room. "You got something, Tehama?"

Tehama got the message. With a sigh, she held out the phone the perp had thrown away in a clear evidence bag to her. "I've got good news, bad news, and a little more bad news. The bad news is that this is a burn phone." Ingrid grabbed the phone and gave it a good long look as Tehama continued. "You can get one at any kind of department store, appliance store, or gas station out there for cheap with no questions asked. A little more bad news: there was only one number that ever contacted this phone, but it's a burn phone, too."

They stopped in front of the interrogation room and Ingrid sighed, running a hand over her face. "So neither of them can be traced."

"Yup." Tehama shrugged. "Sorry, Ingrid."

"Well, maybe you can make up for it. You said you've got good news?"

Tehama winked at her. "You find me that burn phone and I'll be able to tell you if it's the lucky number."

Ingrid raised an eyebrow. "That'll be like looking for a used needle in a needle stack. How is that good news?"

Tehama nudged her in the arm and shot her a comforting smile. "Call me an optimist."

Ingrid rolled her eyes, but couldn't hide the smile from her face; she needed some optimism. "Thanks, Karen." Tehama's faux blue bangs bounced on her forehead as she nodded and she walked off as Fillmore and Vallejo approached.

Vallejo walked towards the door right next to hers – to the observation room – and looked at her as he opened it. "Get something outta this guy, Third." She nodded at him and he disappeared into the room. Ingrid put her hand on the knob.

"Hey."

She looked up at her partner, whose expression had changed from frustration to concern. He leaned toward her.

"You good for this?" he asked quietly, staring her straight in her eyes.

 _I hope so._ "Yeah, I'm good."

He stared at her for a moment, trying to get a read on her, but nodded and handed her Adrian Barrow's school record. "Shake him up, mama." She nodded with a smile and took the file from his hand.

 _God, I love it when he calls me that._

She took a deep breath – a sigh of relief that she and Fillmore were still on speaking terms – and walked into the interrogation room. The brunette sitting at the table flinched as she opened the door and slammed it shut behind her.

"All right Barrow, you've got me in here," Ingrid started and approached the opposite side of the table from him, "so whatever it is you've got to say, say it. I've got an English test I can't miss."

Barrow looked up at her with cold, yet sad, blue eyes, shocking Ingrid as they made eye contact. Everything Ingrid had wanted to say to the boy vanished from her memory as they looked at each other; his eyes told her everything she needed to know.

 _While his tone was fierce and angry, his icy blue eyes were darting around them…_

She sat down in the chair across from him and leaned her elbows against the table. _Who are you scared of?_ she thought. Barrow didn't say a word, just looked at her with those same sad eyes. After a long silent minute of staring into each other's eyes, Ingrid opened his file and skimmed over it, storing everything into her photographic memory and putting together her own profile.

 _Adrian Dylan Barrow, 17 years old. Second year junior._

 _Class skipper – specifically, eighth period for the last two months – chronic spitballer, C average. Rebellious, not particularly motivated, but motivated enough to stay_ in _school. Something must be keeping him here._

 _Written up four times early this semester for insubordination and back-talking his teachers. He isn't afraid of or bothered by those in authority but he has yet to be caught doing anything serious. He probably gets off on the thrill of danger and alluding capture. Wants to commit the crime without the punishment. Why was this time different?_

 _Not many known associates. Three prior suspensions for fighting. He's a lone wolf; aggressive._

Ingrid shut the file and pushed it aside. "Let me just ask you something, Adrian." He blinked at her, but didn't protest, so she stood up, started walking around the table and continued, processing everything she just learned about him out loud to him. "Kicking aside the pleasantries, you're not particularly motivated. You're antisocial and have no friends, but somehow have plenty of enemies considering how many times you've been suspended for fighting."

Barrow looked down at the table, but still didn't say anything. Ingrid stopped pacing behind him and just leaned against the wall, crossing her arms and staring at him through the reflective window across the room.

"You've skipped eighth period every day for the past two months, yet you keep up a C average in all of your classes including that one."

Barrow shook his head. "I'm not hearing a question in there."

"What bothers me, Adrian, is that while you keep up an 'I couldn't care less' attitude, you've got that C average and nothing in your record other than a couple of misdemeanors."

Barrow shrugged, staring back at her in the mirror. "And?"

Ingrid continued with her pacing as she started speculating. "So it hit me." She looked back at him as she circled the table. Barrow shifted uncomfortably in his seat as she continued with her speech. "You act like your one and only desire is to get out of this school, but you don't make a _legitimate_ effort to do so."

"So what's your question, belt?"

Ingrid stopped across from him. "What's keeping you here?" Barrow stared at her, caught off guard by that question but didn't answer.

Ingrid slammed her hand down on the table, making the suspect jump. "I don't have all day, Barrow! You wanted to talk to me, so here I am! Let's talk!"

Barrow stood up and glared. "You don't understand!"

Ingrid threw up her hands and glared back. "Then make me understand!" she shouted back. He stuttered, as if trying to find the words to say. "Who are you protecting, Adrian?" His eyes darted around the room, spotting every camera, every microphone and then looked at the door.

The bell rang, signaling the start of third period and making Barrow flinch at the sudden noise. Ingrid looked down at her watch and grabbed the file from the table.

Barrow sat up straight. "Where are you going?" he asked as she made her way towards the door.

"I told you: I have an English test I can't miss," she replied, turning the knob and opening the door. "You had your shot." She took a step out of the room.

"Beth Range!"

Ingrid stopped in the doorway. Beth Range. She scanned her photographic memory for the name and four glimpses of girls flashed in her head: a blonde, two brunettes and a redhead, all Beths, but not one with the last name Range.

She turned around and looked at him warily. He had his head in his hands, his shoulders were shaking and he was holding his breath. Something about the way he was acting unnerved her. He wasn't the type to be scared easily, but he was definitely afraid of something. She shut the door and walked back over to the table, curiosity gnawing at her bones. As she approached, he put his elbows back on the table and ran a hand through his mussed brown hair and looked back up at her, but didn't say a word. She sat down on the edge of the table, put the file in her lap, and waited for him to continue, encouraging him with soft green eyes.

He fidgeted in his seat again, but finally admitted, "She's my sister." Ingrid raised her eyebrows, and he explained, rubbing his hands on his thighs and staring at his lap, "It wouldn't be in any file or record you have. She's my foster sister, but I'm all she's got. She's only seven. I've been skipping eighth period every day to pick her up from the elementary school and walk her home." He finally looked up into her eyes and revealed that while he had kept his cool, he had been holding back tears. His eyes were a glassy blue, heavy with fear.

Barrow reached up abruptly and grabbed her wrist and held it tight, forcing her to keep eye contact. The sudden movement startled her, momentarily flashing back to their altercation in the hallway before, but she didn't pull away.

"Now you have to promise me," he started, but paused, waiting for his voice to steady, "that if I tell you everything, you'll protect me and my sister." Tears were now flowing freely from his eyes and Ingrid couldn't break away. Instead, she placed her hand over the hand that gripped her arm, and said,

"We can do that, Adrian."

He stared into her eyes, not breaking contact, when there was a sharp knock on the window behind them. Barrow jumped at the sudden sound but let go of Ingrid's wrist and wiped the tears from his cheeks subtly. Ingrid turned around to look at the window, took a deep breath, and looked back at him.

"I'll be right back," she said as she picked the file back up and left the room.

When she walked into the observation room, she made sure to shut the door abruptly behind her. Vallejo glared at her display of anger as she threw her arms out at her sides.

"What was that, Vallejo?" she asked, throwing the file on the table and putting her hands on her hips.

Vallejo shot her a look but said, "We can't provide protection on the girl, Third. The elementary school isn't in our jurisdiction."

Ingrid scoffed. "You're kidding me."

"Ingrid-"

"It may not be our turf, but the middle school patrol can take this on," she argued, her eyes striking nerves in the Commissioner's chest. He was about to speak again when she pointed to Barrow in the other room. "Just look at him, Vallejo. Something's got him scared. You can see it in his eyes!"

Vallejo put up his hands. "Okay, hang on-"

Ingrid didn't stop speaking. "Look, he's a fight or flight kind of guy. He is not the kind of guy to bend over when he's threatened; he lashes out. He retaliates. If he can't, then he runs." She thought back to the three boys who crossed Barrow and didn't make it past the first punch. "Whatever is going on, it has him going against every single instinct he has to fight back, but for some reason, he isn't running either. Something has him scared enough to keep him here and he was too scared to come to us so he let himself get caught."

Vallejo shook his head in confusion. "Wait, 'let himself get caught'?"

"Like I said, he's fight or flight," Ingrid continued, exasperated now. "He was already running and he had no idea Fillmore was going to stop him at the other end but he still chose to stop and try to fight me off. There was no need to sucker punch me when he could have easily outrun me."

Fillmore stared at his partner as she frantically profiled the boy on the other side of the glass. She was talking a mile a minute, desperate to get this boy help. There was a passion in her tone, but he couldn't shake the feeling in his gut that there was something else about this case and that Ingrid saw. To the normal eye, Ingrid was just passionate… but Fillmore knew better. Ingrid felt something.

Vallejo looked through the window and took a good long look at their suspect.

"Vallejo, please," Ingrid pleaded. "He wants to talk but he can't let whoever's got him scared to know that he does." There was a brief silence as Vallejo contemplated their situation, thinking hard.

"She makes a good point, Vallejo," Fillmore offered.

Vallejo sighed. "See what you can get out of him," he said and then turned to Ingrid with a sharp expression in his brown eyes. "Then we'll talk."

Ingrid simply nodded, choosing not to revel in the fact that she had won, turned on her heel and walked quickly from the room, not giving Fillmore even a sideways glance. When the door shut behind her, Vallejo groaned and rubbed his eyes.

"I really don't know what it is, but you two give me headaches."

xXxXx

"About two months ago, I went to pick up Beth at the library." Adrian Barrow rubbed his eyebrows with shaky fingers, shifting in his seat uncomfortably with every passing word. "She always walks there after school and waits for me to come get her. I mean, it's not even a block away, you know? And it's supposed to be safe." He rubbed his palms together nervously as Ingrid took it all in. "But when I walked in, I didn't see her at her usual table, so I went looking around the stacks for her. When she wasn't there, I started to panic.

"I went up to the desk and asked Nora – the librarian – if she had seen her come in… and she said no. She's the one who normally greets Beth when she went in. Nora is her favorite."

" _Nora!" Adrian ran up to the front desk._

" _Hey," the brunette woman at the counter scolded playfully with a pointed finger in his direction. "Didn't your mama ever teach you not to run in the library Adrian?"_

 _He ignored her and placed his hands on the desk. "Have you seen Beth?"_

 _Nora instantly turned serious. "No, I haven't actually. I thought you had picked her up from school or something." She removed the glasses from her nose and placed them on top of her head. "She isn't with you?"_

Ingrid held up a hand. "Do you know Nora's last name?"

"Holbrook. She's the youngest librarian in the joint. You couldn't miss her," he pointed out, then continued as Ingrid nodded. "I ran all the way home, looking for any trace of her as I went, but when I got there, there she was on the couch with a sandwich watching television."

" _Hi Adrian!" Beth greeted with a grin as he entered. "What took you so long?"_

 _Adrian stared at her in awe for a split second before relief flooded through him. He wordlessly ran over to her and picked her up in a tight embrace._

" _Adrian you're crushing me!" she exclaimed with a giggle just as he set her down and held her by her shoulders._

" _Beth why weren't you at the library?" he asked. "How did you get home?"_

" _Your friend from school picked me up today."_

 _His blood ran cold. Little did Beth know, he didn't exactly have friends… everyone he knows either hated him, wanted something from him, or both._

 _He cupped her face in his hands. "What friend?"_

 _She shrugged, "He said his name was B, but that doesn't really make sense. I mean B isn't a name. It's a letter," she told him, genuinely confused. "But he made me a peanut butter sandwich before he left, just the way I like it!"_

 _Adrian shot up and ran towards the half-eaten sandwich the seven-year-old left on the dining room table and peeled the slices of bread apart, examining it closely._

" _Hey, what are you doing?" she cried out. "I'm eating that! Now it has your germs all over it!"_

 _He saw nothing wrong with the sandwich, but his gut still churned. He grabbed it and ran into the kitchen, with Beth close at his heels, and tossed it into the trashcan._

" _What did you do that for?!" she asked, her eyes fierce but glassy with tears._

 _He turned around to face her and kneeled down to her level. "I'll make you another sandwich Beth, okay? Now what else did this guy say?"_

" _Nothing!" she pouted, then she reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. "But he wanted me to give this to you. He said it was really important." Adrian took the piece of paper and unfolded it, reading it carefully and paling at its words. "Can you make me a new sandwich now?"_

"What did the note say?" Ingrid asked, fully roped into the story.

Adrian stared at her for a moment, contemplating if he should go on, and finally forced the words out. "'You should keep your family close. I'll be in touch'."

Ingrid nodded. "Do you still have this note?" Adrian nodded and shakily removed his shoe, the note falling out as he pulled it off. He unfolded it, placed it on the table, and slid it across the table to the detective. Ingrid pulled the piece of paper to her with the tip of her pen and examined it. It was printed from a computer and typed with a delicate script with a red wax seal. Simply signed: "B".

"I've been skipping class to walk Beth home from school ever since. I'd rather miss out on a class I don't even have a chance of passing anyway than have something happen to her, you know?"

Ingrid nodded. "Do you have any idea what the letter 'B' might stand for?"

He shrugged. "Beats the hell out of me."

"When did you come into contact with him next?"

"Two days later," he answered. "A note fell out of my locker with a time and place to meet. Behind the bleachers in the little gym during third hour. When I got there, some guy was waiting for me with that phone and he told me to wait for a phone call, which I got that night."

Ingrid held up a hand to slow him down. "Wait, so you met him?"

Adrian shook his head. "No, not _him._ Just some asshat who admitted to being just a middleman with a message when I tried to beat the crap out of him."

Ingrid raised her eyebrows. "You tried to hurt him?"

Adrian shrugged and threw his hands up. "I thought he was the creep who took my kid sister home! Damn right, I tried to hurt him."

 _That's not important. Focus._ Ingrid shook her head. "Can you describe him?"

He scoffed. "Even better," he said, leaning back in his chair. "I can tell you his name."

"Which is?"

"Joey Ramone. That dick burnout from grade ten who's always ripping off the underclassmen with those fake vending machine cards."

"And what message did he have for you?"

"He gave me that burn phone and told me to keep an eye out. A few days later a note showed up in my locker saying to call up Ms. Childs," he explained, crossing his arms over his chest. "I just had to say what was on the paper and hang up, but I had to make sure my voice was unrecognizable. There's an app on that phone for a voice scrambler he wanted me to use."

"Ramone?" she asked.

"No." He shook his head. "B."

Ingrid raised her eyebrow. "That's all he's been having you do? Make prank phone calls?"

He threw his hands out in the air, "Look, I didn't see the harm in it considering he could so easily harm the only family I've got! I don't even know what those lines mean! He just said to do what he told me to do or else."

"Did he sound familiar to you?"

He shook his head. "Nah. He was using the same scrambler he told me to use."

Ingrid nodded then bit her lip. "You know we'll have to talk to Beth."

Adrian sighed, sat back in his chair, and ran his hand over his face. "Yeah, I know." Ingrid looked at the shrunken teenager in front of her as he looked back up at her. "But you'll keep your promise? You'll protect her?"

Ingrid nodded. "We'll get it set up."

Walking back into the observation room to rejoin Fillmore and Vallejo, she tossed her notepad on the table and put her hands on her hips. "We have to protect that girl."

Vallejo sighed and ran his hand over his face. "I know that, Third."

Fillmore stood shoulder-to-shoulder with his partner, who had placed her fingers on her temples, trying to make a connection that neither of the other two officers saw. "I don't know who this 'B' is, but he's definitely a threat."

"I agree," Vallejo said. "First thing's first: we need to contact Folsom, fill her in on what we have, and get authorization to set up a protection detail for Beth."

"What about the sketch artist?" Fillmore asked. "Should we send Tehama?"

Vallejo nodded. "We only want people who need to know in on this. This case is already starting to get too loud for comfort."

Ingrid finally snapped her fingers and looked back up. "I know."

Vallejo raised an eyebrow. "Know what?"

"Who B is," she concluded. "Buckingham."

"Really?"

"Yes!" she confirmed. "It has to be. Every phone call we've managed to capture has to do with Buckingham and his betrayal. I don't think that can be a coincidence."

"Dawg."

Vallejo crossed his arms, put a finger to his chin, and looked at Ingrid, "We're still gathering information from the teachers and keeping tabs on their phones so we can't be sure that every call included lines from _Henry VIII_. But assuming they had, where do you go from there?"

Ingrid shrugged. "Find Joey Ramone and see what he knows."

Vallejo nodded. "Do it."

xXxXx

"Nothing. He knows nothing." Ingrid collapsed in her desk chair. "And all we could pin him for was a bunch of fake vending cards."

Fillmore tossed an evidence bag full of the cards in question on Anza's desk, who nodded at him, before leaning against his own desk next to hers. "No, he knows _something_. He just doesn't want to tell us what it is."

Ingrid scoffed. "A part of me wishes we just busted him with something bigger than cards so we could at least have a chance at cutting him a deal," she admitted and ran a hand through her short black hair. Counterfeit cards were only a misdemeanor; no perp on their worst day would cut a deal of any kind over those.

Fillmore ran a hand over his face and sighed. "You and me both, mama."

Ingrid reached into her drawer and pulled out Ramone's student file and flipped through it again. Of course, she already had it memorized, but risking pulling out unwanted scenes from her photographic memory? Not a chance.

 _Joseph Ramone, 16, forger and distributor._

 _No obvious ties to Barrow. No overlapping classes, lunch excluded._

"Didn't you already look at that?" Fillmore asked, shooting her an inquisitive look. She nodded.

"Just looking to see if there's something I missed."

He paused but accepted her answer. "I'm gonna brew some coffee. Want some?"

"Sure."

 _First apprehended and processed in grade eight for rigging the drawings for the school's science lab fundraiser. In and out of detention ever since for misdemeanors such as fake hall passes and dance tickets. Suspected involvement in the sabotage of_ _A Christmas Carol_ _last November. Cleared due to lack of sufficient evidence and eye witness placement._

 _President of the X High AV club. He probably knows how to use technologies such as voice scramblers and frequency jammers. Possible connection._

Rewind. _A Christmas Carol?_ She thought. Her heart skipped a beat.

As casually as possible, Ingrid got up from her desk and made her way to the file room and shut the door quietly behind her. She headed straight for aisle CO – covert operations – and straight for case box 15CO216. She pulled it from the top shelf and opened the lid.

She shuddered.

Shrugging it off, Ingrid thumbed through the multiple earmarks. She pulled the file marked 11/13/15, opened it, and searched for the suspect list.

 _Simone Arlen: makeup artist with grudge against director Adam Granger. Alibi checked out. No evidence tying her to the crime. Cleared._

 _Joseph Ramone: caught backstage day before the show by Director Granger and cast member Amy Dillard. No ties to the club. No known prejudices against the club or members. No physical evidence tying him to the scene. Cleared._

 _Unidentified suspect: approx. 6 feet tall, athletic build, white descent. Seen fleeing the theater soon after the set collapsed. Possible connection to previous crimes. Sketch attached._

With a trembling hand, Ingrid lifted the page.

Wade Canton smirked back at her.

The pages fell from her shaking hands onto the floor that seemed to be caving in beneath her. Something crushed her lungs in her chest and made it impossible to breathe as the world started to spin.

 _No. No. It can't be. He was arrested._ She put a hand to her chest and knelt to the ground. _He's out of the picture. It's just a coincidence._

 _But you don't believe in coincidences, Third._

Scrambling to put everything back in the file, she pulled it all together, put the box back in its place, and rushed back out to her desk.

 _It can't be true._

She placed the file in her bottom drawer and opened up the Safety Patrol database and did a quick search: _Canton, Wade._ As it loaded, Ingrid quickly scanned the room, searching for any eyes wandering in her direction, and landed on her partner across the room. He was making conversation with O'Farrell next to the coffee pot. He shook his head at something that the ginger was pointing at on his camera and probably made some witty remark to match.

Wade's picture showed up on the screen.

 _Wade Alexander Canton, 18. Expelled 02/01/16. Placed under house arrest 02/12/16 to care for ill mother pending family court trial. Trial date TBD._

She tried to still her racing heart. Something deep inside her was screaming at her that something wasn't right… that he had to be connected. Another part of her told her that she was worrying for nothing. He was under house arrest; he couldn't have a part in this.

Right?

 **xXxXx**

 **Dun dun duuuuuu could it be? Canton back for revenge?! Of course not… I wouldn't be** _ **that**_ **terrible to Ingrid, right?**

 _ **Right?**_

 **Find out next week ;) See you then! Please review, I'd love to hear from you!**


	3. Beggars and Princes

**Sorry guys. Election week has me really messed up… I have been dissociating and I literally forgot what day it was. So I'm sorry I'm a day late again. Please don't be too mad at me… You know I love you guys!**

 **Just so you have fair warning though, this chapter gets pretty intense near the end. At least it's intense for me because of how close I am to it. So just so you're warned.**

 **xXxXx**

 **Chapter Three– Beggars and Princes**

 **xXxXx**

The shrill ringing of her phone saved Ingrid from another Canton plagued nightmare early the next morning. After taking a deep breath and running her hand over her damp face, she reached for her phone at her bedside and held it to her ear.

"Third."

" _Wakey wakey, mama_ ," Fillmore's smooth voice greeted her and before she could stop herself, she smiled. Something made a loud thunk on his end of the phone. " _Vallejo's calling everyone in_."

She closed her eyes and reached for her lamp, glancing at the clock before turning the light on. "What the hell for?" She rubbed her eyes. "It's not even five o'clock yet."

" _The school paper caught wind of our case_."

Ingrid swore.

" _Yeah, I know_ ," he muttered. " _He's calling everyone in now for a briefing so no one is caught off guard when they walk in_."

"This is going to be a nightmare," she complained and ran her hand through her hair, eyeballing the myriad of files poking out of her backpack next to her desk. She'd been drowning herself in them until two am when she couldn't take anymore and she stuffed them all inside. They'd been calling to her even in her sleep.

" _There's more,_ " Fillmore added. " _He just told me that Appleton woke up to a phone call of his own. Something about beggars and comets. I didn't catch it all."_

Sighing, she threw off her blankets, clad in a black bralette and shorts, and headed for her closet. "What a day." Fillmore chuckled and she kicked her backpack out of spite. "Meet you there?"

" _Yup_. _Late._ " Yawning, she tossed her cell back on her bed and grabbed a pair of torn up skinny jeans and a loose black t-shirt from their hangers. She slipped the shirt over her head and pondered if she should bring up the possible connection between this case and Wade Canton.

 _It's just your imagination, Third._ She stepped out of her shorts and into her black jeans while eyeballing her shelf lined with Shakespearean literature with spite. _Joseph Ramone is a punk. He's probably got his finger in everyone's pie to some degree._ Despite herself, she smirked at her own _Henry VIII_ reference (her favorite reference, at that). _Canton is hindering your ability to perform on the job. You need to forget about him. Focus._

Ingrid started to button up her jeans when she spotted the navy blue spine of her copy of _Julius Caesar_ and she froze. Her photographic memory snapped back to the conversation she just had with her partner.

" _Something about beggars and comets."_

"Crackers." She walked over to the book and ran her finger down the spine before picking it up and flipping it open to act II, scene II:

" _When beggars die, there are no comets seen  
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes_."

She shut the book in her hands and stared at the wall as if it had all the answers. "He's switched plays?" she asked it as her thoughts turned over and over in her mind and displayed themselves on the wall before her. _Traitor's judgment. Traitor. Mischief. Beggars and princes._

Her heart leapt in her chest. _That's it._

She snapped the book shut, grabbed _Henry VIII_ from the shelf, and shoved them in her black satchel before bolting out the door.

xXxXx

"Mornin' hot stuff," Tehama greeted as Fillmore walked into the nearly empty HQ. A few of the younger patrollers crowded the coffee pot and were trying to figure out how to get it started before the others started arriving. He flashed Tehama a toothy smile and walked up beside her.

"How is it that it's barely six in the morning and you still got all your beauty sleep?" he quipped with a wink.

She coyly eyed him up and down. "I could ask you the same thing."

Fillmore chuckled. "Where's the boss?"

"He's waiting for us in his office. Appleton, Ingrid, and Bishop are already in there."

Fillmore wrinkled his eyebrows. "Frank Bishop is here?"

"Vallejo called him in," Tehama explained as they made their way over to the closed off cubicle. "Apparently, whatever the creep told Appleton got him thinking that this guy is starting to pose a threat. He wanted Bishop's help with the profile." Fillmore opened the office door for her and followed her in, shutting the door quietly behind him. The sight before him unnerved him.

Ingrid's hair hadn't been brushed and she didn't do her makeup, which made the bags under her eyes much darker. She had jumped and his and Karen's arrival. She held one book in her hands while Bishop, clad in cargo jeans and an X High sweatshirt, held another. Appleton, leaning against the wall opposite the two profilers, had his arms crossed and was staring at the two with stern eyes. Vallejo, with disheveled hair and an untucked button up dress shirt, stood behind his desk and nodded at their arrival.

"What did we miss?" Tehama asked, not missing a beat.

Appleton took out his phone out of his inner suit jacket pocket and pressed a button. A warbled voice rang out.

" _When beggars die, there are no comets seen. The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes_. _Now let it work. Mischief, thou art afoot. Take thou what course thou wilt."_

Click.

Fillmore suppressed a shudder. "Dawg."

"Principal Appleton got that voicemail two hours ago," Vallejo explained and walked around the desk to the large corkboard on the wall. "An hour later, he got another call from the journalism teacher saying one of his editors just received a tip about the calls the teachers have been getting."

"Let me guess," Tehama interrupted. "Anonymous?"

"Bingo," Bishop quipped and turned back to his book. Fillmore stole another glance at Ingrid. The book in her hand trembled lightly as she murmured something else to Bishop. He didn't have to wonder if she'd remembered breakfast before she ran out the door; she lived farther away from the school than he did and she somehow made it there before him. He made a note to make sure she ate something when the time came.

"It couldn't have been Barrow," Vallejo continued and pointed to his picture, which was sitting under a picture of Joey Ramone. The blank picture above him only had the letter B printed above it. "I put Anza and Tehama on his protective detail."

She nodded, her black and blue curls bouncing in sync with the movement. "He had no contact with anyone who could have given him another burn phone between yesterday and when the call was made this morning. Joe's still hanging outside his house just in case anything changes."

"We figure," Bishop started, shut the book in his hands, and handed it back to Ingrid. "Either B already found someone else to make the calls for him or he's sacking up and making the calls himself."

"Regardless of which of those possibilities is correct, that means he's moving fast," Principal Appleton spoke up, straightening his striped necktie. "The threatening nature of the voicemail I received and the heads up from Mr. Heather prompted me to wake you all," he explained.

Fillmore leaned against the doorframe. "We really think he's a threat?"

"We _know_ he's a threat." All eyes turned in Bishop's direction. He pointed to the letter B on the board. "Ingrid made an excellent connection. Whoever he is, he doesn't understand Shakespeare's format, but he understands enough to pick out bits and pieces from pertinent works to send his message."

"At first, we thought he was taking the role of Buckingham to try to declare his innocence," Ingrid continued and held up the books in her hands, trying to ignore the feeling of Fillmore's eyes drilling into her skull ever since he walked in the door. "But the verses he sent Principal Appleton weren't from _Henry VIII._ They're from _Julius Caesar_. This got me thinking how the two plays are related, but they're not related at all. The characters aren't even from the same century."

Vallejo threw his hands out. "Well if they're not connected then how do we know he's a threat?"

"Themes," Bishop stated and pointed to the books as he said their titles. " _Julius Caesar_ is all about bad omens. _Henry VIII_ is about the rise and fall of power."

"Put them together-" Ingrid held the books together in her hands. "-and he's foreshadowing. He wants revenge."

Momentary panic shot through Fillmore's chest in a hot wave. He pushed off of the doorframe and stood up straight. "He's going after someone in power." Ingrid nodded but shrugged.

"But we have no suspects, so it could be anyone," she countered dryly and set her books down on the bookcase behind her. "It could be the school board, the student council, the principals-"

"Hell," Fillmore interrupted, "it could even be us." Ingrid froze and stared at the red carpet as the others continued to speculate. _It_ could _be us,_ she thought. _Or… could it be me?_

 _No. Wade Canton is just messing with your head,_ she tried to convince herself. _Don't kid yourself. It's not all about you._ She put her fingers to her temples to fight the ever-present migraine. Between fighting flashbacks and needing to go back into her memory for pertinent information, her memories were getting blurred together which made it harder to separate fact from nightmare. _Stop it. Go away._

Fillmore watched carefully as Ingrid shut her eyes and her fingers met her temples. To everyone else, she was just searching her memory like she normally did. But to Fillmore, he knew something about this was different. His gut churned as he watched her slowly back into the bookshelf behind her, face toward the ground and shoulders hunched forward, like she was trying to shrink in on herself. He inwardly kicked himself. _You should have followed up with her last night, dumbass._

Ingrid had been acting even more strange after they tried talking to Ramone. She was hyper-focused and she avoided all conversation not case-related until the end of the day, at which point she bolted the first chance she got, folders and files in hand. Whatever it was that had her freaked out in the first place was only getting worse. Worry grew in the pit of his stomach as he wondered what he should do. He definitely didn't want to cause a scene; Ingrid never responded well to public confrontation.

He glanced between her and the others in the room and his eyes settled on Ingrid's books on the shelf behind her trembling form. He braced himself and approached her quietly, reached for a book behind her – the copy of _Julius Caesar_ – and brushed her shoulder in an attempt to bring her back down to earth.

She flinched at his touch, which made him ache. The fact that even _his_ touch made her uneasy not only scared the hell out of him, but it physically pained him; he was supposed to be the one to protect and comfort her. Deep down, Fillmore was almost sure he wasn't the cause of her strange behavior, but it didn't stop the feeling of guilt surging through him. He watched her hands fall from her temples and he brought the book between them, opening it up to a random page before asking softly, "You okay?"

Her green eyes flicked between his chest and the open book in his dark hands. She blinked multiple times and he tapped her arm with his elbow, encouraging her to respond.

"Ready to give the profile, Third?" Vallejo asked.

Her head snapped in his direction and Fillmore inwardly swore. _He always has to interrupt, doesn't he?_ Ingrid paused, registering what he said, before nodding in Bishop's direction.

"Whenever he's ready."

Vallejo nodded. "Let's get out there." Everyone headed for the door and filed out as Ingrid reached behind them and grabbed her other book. Fillmore watched as Bishop, the last of them, left the room before he turned back to Ingrid.

"You haven't answered my question."

 _God, he can't let anything go._ She set her jaw and snatched her other book from her partner's hands. "I'm fine." She grabbed her satchel at her feet and shoved the books inside. She didn't want to fight with him again, but she also didn't want to let him in. Not yet. Not now.

"Really?" he challenged, crossing his muscular arms. "It doesn't seem like it."

Ingrid straightened and looked him dead in the eyes with a glare she only used in the interrogation room. "I am for now." She turned on her heel and headed for the exit but he grabbed her upper arm.

"Ingrid-"

"What?" she snapped. He stood momentarily shocked by her hostility, looking into her green eyes with worry. This wasn't the Ingrid he knew.

"Ingrid… you're scaring me," he told her, lightly squeezing her arm and silently begging for her to slow down and talk to him. But the last thing he wanted to do was to push her too far. Her glare softened as he spoke. "I need to know if you're up for this."

She looked away from him to the zipper on his leather jacket, wondering what she should say before shrugging her arm out of his grasp. His eyes begged for her to stay, to not push him away, and her heart clenched in her chest at the sight. Another tender moment passed between them before she met his eyes again and said, much softer,

"For now."

Before he could counter, she was out the door and he was alone left wondering what the hell was wrong with his partner.

xXxXx

Ingrid couldn't shake off Fillmore's confrontation. She knew the flashbacks were getting worse with the less sleep she got and she knew people were noticing. It was obviously affecting her work… but she couldn't take herself off of the case. She had to make sure, if it _was_ Canton, that he would stay away from her team.

 _But you still need to do something, Third,_ she told herself. She, Bishop, and Vallejo stood side-by-side in front of about forty safety patrol officers to give the profile before the school day started. Ingrid's eyes darted to the analog clock on the fall they faced: 6:27.

"We need to keep our minds open on this one," Vallejo bellowed. "I want every case file within the last year looked through for any connections. Look for any perps who have recently completed their sentences, moved back into the area, or could have any connection to Adrian Barrow, Joseph Ramone, or who has any bad history with any of the teachers who have been targeted."

"As of now," Bishop took over, "we have no recognizable pattern of teachers targeted that could point us in the direction of a suspect." He nodded in Tehama's direction. "Tehama should be getting a sketch of the perp from a witness this morning so please refer to that if you come across any possible suspects once the sketch is complete and posted." He turned to Ingrid and nodded. She turned to the crowd.

"His ultimate target is someone who symbolizes power. We're unsure of the specific target as of now," she scanned the faces in the room, purposefully avoiding eye contact with her partner in the far right corner, "but what we do know is that he's escalating quickly. Whatever his plans are, he's going to be making his move and soon."

Vallejo continued with his orders as Ingrid started seeing double. Suddenly every pair of eyes belonged to Wade Canton.

 _You can't honestly believe you're okay, can you?_ He mocked her.

Her heart thudded in her chest as Bishop's voice faded into a murmur beside her. Her stomach dropped to the floor and took the breath from her lungs along with it. She braced herself against the wall behind her, fighting back the memories through the pounding in her skull.

" _Just let it happen."_

" _Just relax."_

" _Come on Dee."_

"All right people-" Vallejo clapped his hands together. "-work fast. Let's catch this guy."

Ingrid watched the officers scatter to their desks and she stole another glance at the clock: 6:38. She inwardly swore as her heart rate picked up again. Her fingers buzzed and her head started getting cloudy once more as she noticed Fillmore making his way to the front of the room where she was standing and sheer panic started to set in.

She looked like she was going to be sick by the time Vallejo and Bishop had finished giving the profile. Fillmore watched her throughout the entire presentation; he watched her back into the wall, stare at the clock, and barely hold herself together. His head screamed with concern as Vallejo dismissed the officers and retreated with Bishop to his office, but when he made his way towards Ingrid, she fled in the other direction.

"Fillmore," Karen approached him and nodded towards Ingrid as she walked briskly out the door of the HQ. "What's going on with her?"

Fillmore pushed past her. "I'm about to find out."

He walked out the door into an already busy hallway. Thursday mornings were the busiest between the student council meeting at seven and glee club rehearsals. Fillmore swore – it only made it that much easier for Ingrid to slip away – but he spotted her turning the corner on the left end of the hallway and he walked after her. Turning the corner a little too fast, he collided with a group of fellow juniors.

"Hey watch it!" one of them barked. He mumbled an apology as he pushed through the protesting group and continued on.

But she was gone.

Ingrid stumbled out of the third floor elevator into the empty hallway with a hand on her chest, trying and failing to draw air into her lungs. The elevator doors shut behind her and she fell back against them, lowered herself to the floor and looked up at the ceiling. The sign hanging from the ceiling read "Psychology Wing". _No one is up here this early,_ she thought. _You've got time. Pull yourself together._

A single tear fell from her eye as the ceiling tiles blurred together and Wade pressed himself against her again. _Just relax._ She pulled her knees to her chest tightly and forcefully gasped for air; her nose filled with the scent of his aftershave and the faint smell of cigarettes. Her hands grew stiff and her joints ached. She needed to breathe. _Breathe, Third. Breathe._

"Stop it," she gasped. He pushed his hands up her shirt. "S-Stop it." He grabbed her by the shoulders.

"Officer Third?"

Ingrid forced her eyes open. The hands on her shoulders didn't belong to Wade. They belonged to a blonde woman, green eyes much like her own, fair skin, rectangular glasses. Dr. Holman. Head of the psych department.

"Are you with me Officer Third?"

Ingrid blinked, releasing a few more tears, and tried to nod. Dr. Holman nodded her approval. "Good," she praised and tightened her grip on Ingrid's shoulders. "Let's get you into my office. You'll be safe in there." Ingrid blinked a few more times. A door shut behind her and the middle-aged woman led her to a couch.

No. Wade led her to the couch.

 _He pushed her down into the couch and got on top of her. He was in between her legs and forcing his tongue in her mouth._

" _Just relax, Dee."_

 _His massive, callused hands were under her shirt and pulling her closer to him. She tried pushing him off. She felt his erection against her leg as he unzipped her jeans._

" _Officer Third, I'm going to place this on your chest."_

 _He forced her down by the neck with one hand and harshly grabbed her breast with another._

" _Come on, baby," he whispered huskily in her ear._

Something icy pressed against her chest and Ingrid's hands flew up to it. She gasped for air and fell back to earth.

"Good, that's it," Dr. Holman praised, letting Ingrid replace her own hands on the ice pack. Tears fell freely down her cheeks and she rocked back and forth, holding onto the ice pack like it was her gravity keeping her feet on the ground. She could still feel his lips on hers, his cigarette-tainted breath hot on her face.

"Breathe, Officer."

Ingrid gasped in response, her arms growing weak, but she focused on her heart rate. _I'm okay. He's not here._ She reached up with a now cold hand and touched her cheek, wiping away a tear and staring at it as it fell down her trembling fingers. _I don't need to cry. I am not weak. Do not allow him to make you weak._ She put her hand back on the ice pack against her chest and stared at Dr. Holman who was staring worriedly back at her.

"What the hell is wrong with me?" she whispered, begging for an answer because she couldn't come up with one on her own.

"Is it safe for me to assume," Holman started, removing her glasses to hang them on the collar of her peach button up shirt, "that you're having flashbacks?" Ingrid nodded, taking the ice pack down from her chest and setting it in her lap, squeezing it tightly in her hands. "Tell me about them."

Panic flared in her chest as the memories threatened to consume her again. She shook her head and fought to keep breathing. "No, no I can't."

Holman placed her hands over Ingrid's. "You don't have to immerse yourself in the memory. You don't need to be specific. You can keep it simple. Just talk me through it."

 _But it's not simple. It's complicated. It's heavy._ Ingrid fought to piece together something coherent that would make sense but her words weren't forming. There was a lump in her throat that kept anything from spilling out, like a plug in a sink.

 _Let it go, mama._ Fillmore told her.

"I-I was undercover." _Stop it. Don't._ She swallowed the plug in her throat. "I was supposed to get c-close to him," she stuttered. Holman nodded, pressing Ingrid's hands tighter against the ice pack, silently encouraging her to continue. Ingrid stared at their hands and focused on the cold.

"He tried to rape me."

Dr. Holman bit her lip but nodded in acknowledgement. "And you have eidetic memory." Ingrid nodded, letting the tears fall.

"And the flashbacks follow me everywhere." Her voice broke as the words left her mouth, the burden of holding them lifting from her throat. "I can't do this anymore, Dr. Holman, I need to know how to stop them. How do I get them to stop?" Holman watched the girl breaking in front of her with sympathetic eyes, knowing that the words she was about to say would not be received well. She placed her hand back over Ingrid's.

"Stop fighting them."

Ingrid did a double take. Did she hear that right? "What?"

"You have photographic memory," Holman pointed out the obvious. "The memories are not going anywhere." Ingrid shifted under her gaze, debating whether or not she should make a run for it. Holman sensed this; she moved her chair slightly closer to Ingrid and kept her eyes on hers. "The more you fight the flashbacks, the harder they're going to fight back. Do you understand?"

Ingrid's head swam with the notion that she had to suffer through the memories. _She doesn't understand,_ she thought as her mind took her to the night before when she was plagued with the nightmares. She woke up stifling a scream, covered in bruises from thrashing against the wall and her bedside table, and a racing heart she couldn't slow down. Her vision started to blur again, turning Holman into a vague collage of diluted shapes and colors. Ingrid remembered blacking out in the hallway with her only recollection being Barrow's suggestive gaze as he stared at her form before being pulled off of him.

" _What are you doing girl?"_

" _What's gotten into you?"_

 _I can't just let them take over,_ she argued. She was already seeing Wade in everyone she passed: everyone had his evergreen eyes, his lopsided smile, and wore his aftershave. He whispered in her ear: _I own you._ Nausea spread through her stomach like a tidal wave and she shuddered.

"Stay with me, Officer." Ingrid opened her eyes and looked Dr. Holman in the eye once more. Her heart was pounding so hard and for so long, her chest started to ache from the strain and her head was lighter than normal. _You can't keep this up, Ingrid._

"So w-what am I supposed to do?" she gasped. Stars gathered in the corners of her eyes.

"Breathe." Dr. Holman ordered softly. Ingrid took a strained breath through her nose in response and Holman nodded in approval. "You have to let the flashbacks run their course. And each time, they will get easier and easier to stay present through." Ingrid's arms and legs were tingling from lack of oxygen and she felt her fingers stiffen once more, but Holman continued. "You have to acknowledge them but you don't have to lose yourself in them."

"H-How?" Ingrid was seeing two of everything now.

"Keep yourself grounded," Holman explained. "Grab something with texture and focus on it. Be aware of the ground beneath your feet." She squeezed the ice pack in Ingrid's hands. "Feel something cold. Tell yourself that you're safe. Anything that can keep you in the moment while the flashbacks play out."

She felt herself start to sway and shook her head, "I can't…"

"It's okay, don't fight it. Just lie down."

Ingrid blinked at the ceiling before shutting her eyes.

 **xXxXx**

 **I have always been curious how people with photographic memory deal with trauma. It was kind of hard for me to write this all down and put it in words that can really iterate how intense panic attacks due to trauma are like. I've had panic attacks before, but these are two fairly separate situations and they're very different. I really hope I captured it correctly… I've met a lot of people this year who have helped me wrap my mind around this idea and that's where the inspiration for this chapter came from. This chapter is for them.**

 **Thanks for reading, guys. Please review and let me know how I did! I'd love to hear from you. Sending lots of love your way!**


	4. The Ides of March

**What do you know? I'm posting on TIME this week, haha. It continues to get more and more bittersweet with each chapter because I know with each update that the end is getting** _ **nearer**_ **. But I'm excited nonetheless.**

 **This was my ABSOLUTE favorite chapter to write. Partly because of the tortured-soul-meets-validation-via-god-complexed-best-friend-who-gives-great-hugs element, but mostly because everything** _ **finally**_ **gets put together and the truth finally set her free.**

 **Well sorta. You'll see what I mean *evil wink***

 **Please read and review! I really want to know what you guys think**

 **xXxXx**

 **Chapter Four – The Ides of March**

 **xXxXx**

Fillmore gave up searching for Ingrid after twenty minutes of lurking throughout the halls of X and instead took it upon himself to patrol the empty halls, keeping an eye out for anything out of place – including his partner.

It couldn't be the case that was getting to her; granted, it was making matters worse, but she'd been acting strange before they caught wind of the case. He couldn't pinpoint exactly when he started noticing her behavior start to shift. _Who's got the photographic memory when you need it?_ He opened the door at the end of a hall that lead to the staircase and went up to the second floor.

He hadn't been able to shake the uneasiness sitting like a boulder in his gut since they'd been put on this case. Everything about it unnerved him – from the eerie messages to how close Ingrid was to it. It didn't seem like a coincidence to him that Shakespeare was Ingrid's favorite poet, the two plays in question were her favorites, and whatever it was Barrow said to her when she collared him in the hallway. She never told him what it was but he still couldn't piece together an explanation. As much as he wanted to bring this to Vallejo's attention, he didn't want to risk losing Ingrid as his partner on this case, despite her current state of mind. He knew she wasn't in a good place but this case seemed to be the only thing keeping her on the ground.

Fillmore sighed and walked into the next hallway. He hated not knowing what his next move should be and he was bitter that he couldn't figure out how to help his best friend – rather, that she wouldn't _let_ him help her. He approached the AV lab and stopped just before the door. _Ramone is the AV club pres,_ he recalled, and an idea hit him. It was a bad one, but he wasn't the best on the force for all of his _good_ ideas.

He took in his surroundings before pulling a pair of seasoned bobby pins from the back of his belt, knelt down in front of the doorknob, and worked them into the keyhole. He kept an ear out for anyone approaching and the lock gave way. He slipped in and shut the door quietly and relocked it behind him. He paused, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness before making his way over to the front desk. He stopped in front of it for a moment, reading the name plate: _Joseph Ramone, President._ He scoffed before walking around and sitting in the worn out swivel chair.

"If I were involved in something big," he murmured to himself. He started looking through drawers. "Would I be stupid enough to keep evidence in my desk?" He rummaged through the top two and didn't find anything worthy of note and almost gave up on the third one when he noticed a small nick at the edge of the drawer which made him look twice. He pulled out the contents – a few files and some tapes – set them on the top of the desk, and felt around the edge of the bottom of the drawer. A similar nick on the opposite side snagged the calloused skin on his fingertip and he lifted up, the bottom giving way. He glanced in.

"Disco."

Packaged burn phones.

 _Now only if this was a warranted search,_ he thought. He shook his head at himself before looking at his watch. _7:23._ _Damn._ He quietly put everything back where he found it, slid the drawer shut and stood up. He made his way to the door and slipped out without a trace.

 _At least now we know we're looking in the right direction,_ he assured himself as he made his way back to HQ. _Just need to make it official. And figure out what's going on with Ingrid._ His head throbbed as he descended the stairs, wondering if he could figure out his next move before getting back to headquarters.

xXxXx

Thirty minutes after waking up on the couch in Holman's office, Ingrid walked back into HQ, ignoring the myriad of eyes watching her the moment she entered. She saw no sign of her partner and inwardly berated herself. _He's probably pissed at you. Rightfully so._ She made her way to her desk to go through some files before her first class, stealing a glance at the clock: 7:33. _The way you blew him off this morning probably did the trick._

She collapsed in her chair and rubbed her eyes, still worn out from her episode this morning. Dr. Holman called it a panic attack, which was accurate. She woke up lying down on a couch with an ice pack on her chest with hardly any memory of how she ended up there. It all came back in bits and pieces but she had been fairly disoriented upon waking which almost triggered another episode itself. Ingrid reached into her pocket and pulled out a pocket-sized container which held a small ball of "thinking putty" Holman suggested she used to ground herself in case of… well, "emergency". She stared at the galaxy pattern on the case and set it on her desk.

That's when she noticed her splatter-print coffee mug – which had been filled – sitting patiently on her mug warmer next to something that was wrapped in a paper towel. A yellow sticky note with Fillmore's crooked handwriting was stuck on top of it. She peeled it off and read it: _Eat something._

Ingrid sighed, sticking the note to the surface of her desk and unwrapping a blueberry bagel, her favorite, and staring at it. Her stomach growled, finally noticing that she deprived it of breakfast this morning. She took a bite of the pastry and stared at her blank computer screen.

 _He deserves to know,_ she convinced herself.

She took a deep breath, a sip of her coffee, and looked up just as her partner walked in the door. Their eyes met for a split second – she swore her heart skipped a beat – and watched him walk towards her. Her heart raced as he wordlessly approached her and sat down at his desk. Anxious thoughts swirled around in her head as she ripped off another piece of her bagel and popped it in her mouth, focusing on the taste like Holman told her to. _Should I say something now?_ She washed the bite down with a sip of coffee, the hot liquid stinging her throat. _Should I wait for him to bring it up? Should I do it at all?_

Fillmore abruptly stood up, pushed his swivel chair next to hers, and spun it around. He sat down, leaning against the back of the chair, and started to speak, softly. _God, here it comes._

"I just found burn phones in Ramone's desk."

 _Wait, what?_

Ingrid looked at him quizzically. "What?"

He nodded. "I snuck into the AV lab while you were gone," he explained, keeping his voice low. "Found them in a hidden compartment in his desk. They're all the same model as the one we found on Barrow." Ingrid paused to try and process what he was telling her. She had been bracing for a lecture or passionate plea, not information on the case.

"You got a warrant to search his desk?" she asked, matching his soft tone, but by the way his lips formed a straight line, she knew the answer. She scowled at him. "You didn't get a warrant to search his desk."

"Which is why I need your help so we can get one," he countered, matching her scowl with his own signature mischievous stare; a raised eyebrow followed by a subtle wink. "That way I don't get in trouble." Ingrid scoffed, suppressing a smirk, but reached into her left-hand drawer and pulled out Ramone's file.

"Well, all we know is that he's the president of the AV club," she started, flipping open his file and sliding it over to him. He skimmed over it as she continued. "That, and he's got a lot of roots and connections in the counterfeiting industry. Nothing solid. If we want to get a warrant, we'll have to nail him for something of that nature because everything we have tying him to this case is purely circumstantial."

Fillmore nodded at the file. "Meaning we have to dig deeper. And by the time we can do that, the phones might disappear which means we've gotta move fast." He flipped the file shut and looked at her sincerely. "I just need to know that you're up for it."

 _There it is._

Ingrid bit her lip and stared at her computer screen, leaning against her desk with her elbows. "I should have seen that one coming."

"Ing, you know I'm just worried about you," he murmured, nudging her with his shoulder. She took a deep breath in, stroked the handle of her coffee mug, and nodded as she exhaled. " _Really_ worried." She leaned her head slightly in his direction, debating if this was the right time to have such a loaded conversation when the starting bell shrieked over their heads. Ingrid squeezed her eyes shut as the noise intensified the pressure in her skull. When the bell finally silenced, Ingrid opened her eyes and looked in her partner's soft brown eyes and sighed.

"I know," she admitted, looking back down and running her hands over her face. She left her face in her hands and stared down at her keyboard. Between the flashbacks, the case at hand, and sorting through her emotions, her mind felt like a battlefield. The idea of getting some of it out and being seen as weak – and by the one who counted on her strength – scared the hell out of her. She had no idea how she could let it all out without breaking down. Taking into consideration what happened that morning, she assumed her chances of avoiding another one were slim to none. Fillmore rested his hand on her back, stroking her spine with his thumb. The gentle contact sent a chill down her spine, but finally, it was not from fear or panic.

She wanted his touch. She _needed_ it. She needed someone to touch her, to ground her, and she wanted that someone to be him. She may be closed off to most people, but Fillmore wasn't one of them. Granted, they rarely shared intimate moments together, but she relished them when they did. Those moments revived her.

" _The last thing I want is for you to feel like you can't come and talk to me."_

Her heart twisted in her chest as she remembered that night: the way he fought for her when she was in danger at the expense of his own safety; the way he held her like if he let her go, he'd never see her again; the way his hand felt in hers and the way he told her he was always there for her.

Ingrid's eyes burned as she looked back over at him; she'd made up her mind.

"Fillmore…" she swallowed the plug in her throat. He frowned at the way her soft voice broke as she spoke his name, but nodded. He would be there for her. "Can-"

"Fillmore, Ingrid."

 _Are you kidding me?_

The duo scowled at the owner of the voice in front of them. Anza lifted his hands defensively. "Whoa. If looks could kill."

"What is it, Joe?" Ingrid asked plainly.

"Barrow's in with his sister," he explained, his cerulean eyes flickering nervously between the partners. He jerked a thumb behind him in the direction of the interview room. "Karen's getting the sketch started."

"And?" Fillmore snapped with raised eyebrows.

Anza lifted his hands again and backed away. "I was just supposed to let you know," he defended, walking towards the interview room. "Don't shoot the messenger." Fillmore scoffed and shook his head as their teammate retreated.

"We knew that was going down," he complained and Ingrid rubbed her eyes. _It's now or never, Third._ "Why'd they feel the need to-"

Ingrid interrupted him by grabbing his hand. Taken back by the sudden contact, he stared at her as she rose to her feet and said, "Come on." He got up and followed her out the door.

 _I'm going to do this,_ she tried to convince herself as she led Fillmore down the hallway, not letting go of his hand. She could feel the flashbacks starting again and she needed something to hold on to. She scolded herself for clinging to him when she hadn't even explained herself yet, but he would understand. _He_ will _understand. He has to._ She took her ID from her pocket and swiped it in the card reader by the elevator. The light turned green and the red "up" arrow flashed before them.

Fillmore stood next to her and stared at their warped reflections in the elevator before them. His brain was firing on all cylinders and his pulse raced. He had no idea what he was about to hear. He knew that it could be anything but that whatever it was, it was hard for Ingrid to talk about. He could count on one hand how many heart-to-heart conversations they've had – two, not including the one they're about to have – but none of which involved a version of Ingrid who couldn't handle everyday tasks like getting out of bed on time. Honestly, he had no idea how he was going to react to whatever she needed to tell him.

So he squeezed her hand, and she did the same. The elevator dinged and the doors opened, welcoming them in. Ingrid led him into the elevator and finally let go of his hand as the doors shut. He shoved his hands in his pockets and stared at the ground, mentally preparing himself. _Don't interrupt her. You don't want to shut her up,_ he ordered himself. _Just shut up and listen._ Ingrid pressed the button to the third floor and they ascended in silence.

Ingrid pressed the emergency stop button halfway through their trip, bringing the elevator to a stop, and stared at her trembling hand which was still hovering over the button. _I'm doing this. You're doing this._ She swallowed the anxiety creeping up her throat. _You can do this._

Fillmore looked up from the ground at his friend. He watched as her shoulders trembled. She whispered something to herself that he didn't catch and she started to face him, but she didn't make eye contact. She kept her eyes closed. _Where do I even start?_ she wondered, when her thoughts wandered to this morning. _There._

"This morning I…" she trailed off, pressing her sweating palms against her forehead. _Say it. Say it._ "I had a panic attack and I-I passed out in Dr. Holman's office." Her chest tightened again, forcing some of the breath from her lungs, and she felt Canton's hands on her again. _No. Please, not here. Not now._ She blindly reached out for Fillmore and her hand landed on his chest, grabbing a fistful of his grey t-shirt. _Fillmore is real. I am okay._

"Ingrid?"

" _Just relax."_

She gasped for air, backed into the elevator doors, and put her other hand on his chest. Fillmore's hands flew up to cover hers and he squeezed them tightly. He was on the verge of switching the elevator back on and getting her help. "Ingrid-"

"I've been having flashbacks that I can't stop anymore," she rambled, forcing herself to breathe and pressing herself further into the cold elevator doors as Canton pushed her into the couch. _The couch is not real. These doors are real. I am okay._ "Th-they happen all the time and I-I can't-"

"Are you having one right now?" Fillmore interrupted her, squeezing her fists tighter against his chest. She nodded repeatedly as she forced herself to take deep breaths, despite feeling Canton's hand trying to squeeze her throat shut. "God Ingrid, what can I do?" he asked, moving closer to her.

" _Stay._ " She forced him back away from her the way she couldn't force Canton. "I just need t-to let it pass. Just stay." She whimpered and shut her eyes, focusing on the cotton fabric of Fillmore's shirt in her fists, the solid door behind her, and Fillmore's faint cologne.

" _Come on, Dee."_

Fillmore stood powerless, watching her tremble and shake in front of him. His mind swam as he tried to process what was happening. _Flashbacks of what?_ He started to wrack his brain for the answer. _She's got that damn memory. It could be anything._ _So what could leave her like this?_

That's when it hit him.

Canton was on top of her, pressing himself against her, but Ingrid held on to her partner's shirt. _It's not happening right now. It's over._ Canton forced his tongue into her mouth and his hand up her shirt. _Breathe._ She felt his jeans swell against her leg and her breath hitched in panic. _Don't stop breathing. This will be over soon._

Canton finally let go of her throat and she took a deep breath in. He got off of her and she felt the weight lift from her chest. Ingrid finally relaxed, loosening her grip on Fillmore's shirt but he tightened his on her hands.

"Ingrid?" he asked tentatively as he watched her relax. She kept her face level with the ground and worked on catching her breath. _It's over…_ she took a deep breath in. _It's over._ She opened her hands, pressing her palms flat against Fillmore's chest. _God that must have been a sight._

Fillmore inched closer to her, not sure if he should give her space or take her in his arms and not let go. He had never seen her – or anyone, for that matter – experience something like that, and Canton was the cause of it… Fillmore didn't know if he could cope with it without hunting the sick bastard down and beating him to a pulp. And not to mention the guilt he already felt for not being there for her when it went down, for not protecting her.

 _But you can protect her now,_ he told himself. _Help her now._

Ingrid took her hands away from his chest and rubbed her face, pressing her palms against her forehead. Fillmore's overbearing sense of responsibility towards her burned in his chest, prompting him to do something, anything, that would make this better for her. But he still didn't know for sure what was happening despite having a good clue about what it was.

"Ingrid…" he started as she ran her hands through her hair. She finally looked up at him with bloodshot eyes. He swallowed. "They're about Canton… aren't they?"

She cringed when he said his name… but she nodded.

"I… I have photographic memory and I…" She pressed her palms into her eyes again, trying to force the words out of her mouth. "I can't – forget – _anything,_ " she gasped. Her senses suddenly flooded with everything she ever associated with Canton. Her gut twisted with nausea as she began pacing the elevator. "I can't forget the way his mouth tasted like cigarettes or the smell of his aftershave or the sound of him groaning and begging for me in my ear or his breath on my neck and it's so bad that I can't walk down the hallway without feeling like he's all around me-"

Ingrid was shattering in front of him. Her words were pouring out of her mouth like an avalanche and it took every ounce of self-control he had not to grab her and pull her into him… to make her feel safe. But he knew that what she needed right now wasn't a savior. She needed someone to listen. So all he could do was watch her break and wait for the right moment to step in.

God, was it killing him.

"-and I can't sleep without him touching me again and I feel like it's breaking me and there's nothing I can do to stop it because I can't forget _any_ of it," she stopped at the wall opposite of her partner, her hands overlapping on her heart, and she stared at him with tearing eyes. "I can't fight this anymore, Fillmore." Tears fell down her face. "I have never been so afraid and I'm not strong enough."

He couldn't take it anymore. Fillmore closed the space between them and held her tightly in his arms.

"I can't do it, Fillmore, I just can't," she sobbed, burying her face in his shoulder. He kissed the top of her head and rested his cheek there.

"Ing, it's okay," he tried to reassure her even though he knew it probably wouldn't do much good. She continued to mumble into his shoulder as he tried to process the scene playing out in front of him. This was Ingrid. _His_ Ingrid. Strong, independent, smart, and tough-as-nails Ingrid. He had never seen her like this... he had hoped that he never would, but there she was. He was speechless.

He buried his face in her hair and squeezed his eyes shut to force away the moisture. _How could I let this happen?_ He had obviously seen the signs: she wasn't sleeping, hardly eating, was hyper-focused one minute and completely checked out the next, and she flinched away from anyone's touch, including his own. He berated himself for not doing something sooner. But of course, Fillmore knew that's exactly why she didn't tell him what was going on. She knew that he would run them _both_ ragged while he tried to fix something they both knew he couldn't. She didn't tell him because she was trying to save them both the trouble.

He kissed the top of her head and tightened his embrace, knowing that no amount of comforting words would make a difference, but he prayed that he could be what she needed. This _had_ to be what she needed… it was all he had to give.

The tighter he held her, the easier it became for her to breathe. With him, Ingrid felt safe. Fillmore had been watching out for her since day one when she had been framed for those stink bombs. Her life had been in chaos before she was thrown into X as a last resort. He turned out to be the one who would make that last ditch effort a successful one. Suddenly, he became a constant in her life, a fixed point, and time after time again he proved himself to be the one person who would stick by her through everything. He was her safe place.

And when he kissed the top of her head, she could finally feel her feet touching the ground. The sobs stilled in her chest and her heart rate finally started to slow down. He ran his hand repeatedly up and down her back, sending chills down her spine as her system started to return to normal. _I'm safe,_ she told herself. _I'm okay._ Fillmore's heart beat steadily against the side of her head. _I am safe_.

 _And boy, did you just give him a show_.

Suddenly she didn't know if she should keep hiding in his shoulder or break away from his grasp and hide somewhere else as shame creeped up from her stomach and settled like a lump in her throat. _So much for keeping it together_ , she scolded herself.

She backed away from him and wiped the tears off of her cheeks. He let her distance herself from him but watched her with these tortured brown eyes which she couldn't stand. "I feel like I can't even function, Fillmore," she started, trying to avoid looking at him. "I see glimpses of him in every person that I pass and I see his trademarks on every shred of evidence we have." She ran a hand over her face and walked over to the opposite side of the elevator. She leaned against the railing, focusing on her feet while Fillmore focused on what she was saying. "I keep making these connections that aren't even there and I've been running myself ragged trying to prove to myself that I'm wrong and that he's not involved in this case and that I'm just losing my mind."

Fillmore was torn. He wanted to reassure her that Canton would never touch her again… not if he had anything to say about it. He wanted to tell her that it would all go away and that everything will get better. That she wasn't losing her mind; she was just traumatized.

But he remembered how determined Ingrid was while interviewing Barrow and the way she convinced Vallejo to make a deal. She was the one who personally figured out how to get a protective detail set up outside of their jurisdiction. He watched the way she poured over every file, every piece of evidence, and every second of the phone taps. She only did so much work when she knew there was something about a case that separated it from any other case.

Ingrid was intelligent. Attentive. Motivated. Traumatized or not, any connection she made had significance. And as much as he only wanted to focus on Ingrid in this moment, the detective in him screamed at him: Ingrid knew Canton better than anyone, as much as it killed him to admit it. If Canton was involved, Ingrid would be the first to catch it.

And the churning in his gut told him that she did, but she had been too afraid of her own mind to admit it.

"You think Canton is involved?" he asked, cautiously.

Ingrid shrugged and met his eyes. "I don't know what I think anymore."

"Well, what connections do you think you made?" he asked, taking a step towards her while crossing his arms.

She threw her arms out at her sides. "I don't think there is one, Fillmore, that's what I'm saying." She ran her hands through her hair in exasperation. "I'm saying that I feel like I've been so caught up in this _crap_ that I forged a connection as some sort of… I don't know, projection of whatever's going on in my head." She sighed and slid down the elevator wall and put her head in her hands. "And I feel so _stupid._ "

 _Stupid because you let him get as far as you did,_ she accused herself, swallowing the lump in her throat. _Stupid because you're letting him affect you even now, almost two months later._ The heavy weight of guilt grew in her chest as she remembered how close she came to falling for him. The look in his eyes was much similar to her own as he was dragged away in handcuffs after her identity was revealed. _Stupid because you still care. You still think he can be saved, even after what he did to you._

 _Stupid. You deserve these flashbacks._ The tears returned to her eyes. _You need to be reminded how much of a monster he is._

"Ingrid," Fillmore knelt down in front of her and place his hands on the tops of her knees, "You're hurting. That doesn't make you stupid." She let her hands fall in her lap and she looked down at them with sullen eyes. His chest ached as he watched her picking at her fingernails timidly. Seeing her behave so uncharacteristically had his nerves frayed at the seams. "Ingrid, could you look at me?"

She didn't know if she could. She felt the guilt eating at her insides; the unworthiness sat in her gut like a brick, making her nauseous. But Fillmore tucked a finger under her chin and tilted her head up, forcing her to look in his dark eyes.

"You don't make insignificant connections, Ingrid." He put his hand on the side of her head, wiping away a stray tear with his thumb. "Caught up in your 'crap' or not," he joked, hoping to lighten the atmosphere ever so slightly. She scoffed, hiding a ghost of a smile, and placed her hand over his, turning into his touch. He pulled his hand away and sat down beside her, propping his elbows on his knees. "So what was it, mama?"

Ingrid wrapped her arms around her stomach and brought her knees up to her chest, trying to bite back the shame long enough to spit it out. "I just…" She bit her lip while he waited patiently for her to continue. "I noticed that Ramone had been a suspect in the Christmas Carol disaster in November." Fillmore squinted at her, unsure of how she made the connection. She shrugged her shoulders. "That was the first and only case where we had solid proof that Canton was responsible for all those heists."

"And then we connected him to his other heists and set up the sting."

Ingrid nodded and took another deep breath. "And when I got home yesterday," she started, swallowing the lump forcing its way back up her throat, "I spent the rest of the night digging through everything we had and I just noticed how…" she trailed off, unsure if she should bring it up, but Fillmore nudged her softly with his elbow. She squeezed her eyes shut and continued. "Remember how you thought maybe the connection between the teachers was a common student?"

"Yeah," Fillmore nodded. "When we were trying to find the student making the calls?"

Ingrid nodded, wringing her hands together in her lap. "Looking through the files again I found myself… slipping back into Deana's cover." Fillmore's eyes narrowed in confusion, wondering how it was related, when she looked back up at him with glassy eyes. "And I realized the common student was her."

Fillmore bit his lip as his gut lurched. _She got him._

"I know it's just a coincidence," she defended herself, rambling now. "That's why I haven't said anything. I've been trying to find anything that contradicts that but I can't prove _or_ disprove it and I feel like I've just been going around in circles trying to reassure myself that it's not him and I'm just crazy."

Fillmore shook his head as he started to absorb everything she was saying. "I don't think you're crazy, Ingrid."

Her head snapped in his direction. "What?"

He sighed, knowing he would regret these words the moment they left his lips. Ingrid, in a sense, was a martyr; the second she felt responsible for anything, she would do anything she could to make it right, even at the expense of herself. He knew she would take this to heart… but he knew it needed to be said.

"You said so yourself," he started, cracking his knuckles, "Canton was falling in love with you." Ingrid stared at the wall opposite of them. "And whoever Buckingham is, his target is someone in power who had wronged him in the past." He braced himself, looked down at his partner, and continued softly, "And who could hold a bigger grudge than someone with a broken heart?" Ingrid looked up at him, too stunned to speak. "Do you remember ever referencing Shakespeare when you were together?" he asked. She looked back at the wall.

" _This one was my personal favorite, if I had to choose." Canton pulled out a manila envelope and dumped the contents out on the glass table in front of them: pictures of Folsom's destroyed office. Ingrid of course knew what they were, but "Dee" was new in town. She had no familiarity with the staff, so she played dumb._

" _Ooh, you trashed an office," she mocked, flipping through the photos. "You're such a badass."_

 _Canton laughed. "Nah, it was just personal." She came across a picture of the woman in question – a picture which had obviously been taken from a distance – and he pointed at it. "That's Folsom, X Middle's pretentious head bitch. She made my life hell. This was just a little payback." She handed him the stack of photos and he slipped them back in the envelope._

" _I get it," she admitted, watching him reseal the envelope and toss it on the green chair next to him. "I've a personal vendetta of my own I haven't settled yet back in Richmond."_

 _Canton tilted his head, his green eyes sparkling with curiosity. "Do tell."_

 _She shrugged, leaning back into his couch. "My English teacher there had it out for me because I knew more about his material than he did. He doubled as the director of the drama club," she explained, then stared wistfully at the ceiling. "I got kicked out before I had a chance to say 'Macbeth' at their adaptation of_ Henry VIII _. Which is actually my favorite play, mind you."_

 _Canton grinned, "Are you serious?"_

 _Ingrid nodded. "As a heart attack."_

 _He shook his head, the grin not leaving is face. "I never would have pegged you as the type who likes plays, Dee."_

 _She shrugged. "What can I say? I'm a slut for dramatic flair."_

" _Fair enough," he chuckled, a mischievous gleam in his eyes. "But you wanna know something funny?" She nodded. "I actually did that at this year's Christmas play," he admitted, his grin stretching from ear to ear. Ingrid already knew this, but plastered a look of shock on her face anyway. "Of course, I pulled the right strings to make sure Macbeth actually did some damage," he continued, stretching his arm across the back of the couch behind Ingrid. "But either way, Macbeth still lived up to his name."_

" _Wait, the_ Christmas Carol _play? That was you?"_

 _He lifted his hands with pride. "The one and only." She nodded._

" _Wow," she started. "Looks like someone's got their finger in every pie."_

 _Canton did a double take. "What?"_

 _Ingrid acted annoyed. "It's a metaphor from_ Henry VIII. _Duh." He put a hand on her shoulder and she shuddered._

" _Ingrid? Are you with me?"_

Ingrid gasped back into reality. Fillmore was squeezing her shoulder and watching her with worry.

" _Henry VIII,_ " she blurted. She looked her partner in the eyes, her heart now racing with pure panic. "I quoted _Henry VIII._ " Fillmore, recognizing the panic in her eyes, placed a hand on her knee in an attempt to keep her calm.

"It's not your fault."

She turned her body to face him fully. "But he was arrested, he can't be behind all of this. He's not even here!"

"But it's only house arrest. He can still pick up the phone," he told her, trying to keep his voice calm, hoping she would do the same even though he knew it probably wouldn't work. "He ran X's underground for a long time undetected, Ingrid. He probably still has a lot of connections around here, meaning he's got motive and the opportunity." Her chest tightened with the weight of his words. _It's him. It's him._

Her mind cleared. It all made sense. She was the traitor who passed judgment. She was the one who wore the disguise and became black like _him_. He was the beggar and she was the prince. He had been telling them who he was all along and what he wanted.

And when he wanted it.

She felt around her pockets for her phone, but she didn't have it on her. She must have left it in her bag or on her desk. Fillmore watched her quizzically. "Fillmore, what's today?"

He raised an eyebrow. Why did that matter right now? "Tuesday."

She shook her head. "No, not the day, the date. What is it?"

He looked down at his watch to the little square on the right. "The fifteenth. Why?"

Her heart jumped into her throat. _No._ She shot up and ran over to the console to turn off the emergency stop button and they started ascending. Fillmore shot up as well.

"Ingrid-"

She kept her eyes on the doors. "We have to get back to HQ."

"Why?" he asked, turning her to face him. She almost couldn't hear him over the pounding of her heart in her ears. "What's so important about the fifteenth?"

"In the beginning, the soothsayer stopped Caesar when he came back from war to warn him about the ides of March," she explained, frantically. "But he brushed him off, and that's when he was killed."

"The ides of March?" he asked.

She took a deep breath, trying to stop her voice from shaking. "March fifteenth." Fillmore's eyes widened. The elevator dinged and opened its doors.

"He's making his move today."

She nodded. "We have to warn everyone."

The duo exited the elevator at a run and headed straight down the stairs towards the patrol office. Suddenly it felt like things were back to normal; she had her partner at her side, a case to close, and a clear mind.

But things weren't normal. This reality hit her as they neared the HQ and she slowed to a stop. Wade Canton was ruthless. No crime was too big for him. He had unlimited resources and a score to settle. Whatever he had planned, it was personal, and it had the potential to be devastating. Fillmore noticed that she stopped and he followed suit. "Ingrid, what's wrong?"

She looked at her partner, the one who beat the crap out of Canton the night of the treasury heist, and fear struck her like a fist in the gut. _What if he was after Fillmore too?_ She looked between Fillmore's worried eyes and the safety patrol door and she knew what she had to do.

She had to protect her partner.

"I just…" She trailed off, wringing her hands together nervously. She wasn't worried about setting off any warning bells in her friend's head; after her display in the elevator, it probably wasn't an unusual behavior. "I think I just need a minute."

She was right. Fillmore just nodded and put his hands on her shoulders, giving them a reassuring squeeze. "Do whatever you need to. I'll go and fill them in." She nodded and started to look down but he put a hand on the side of her face, keeping eye contact with her. His eyes poured into hers, sending a chill down her spine. She prayed he didn't see what was going on in her head. She reached up and held his wrist. "It's gonna be okay, Ingrid."

She nodded. "It has to be."

He bit his lip, unsure of how to respond. For a moment, he pulled her close and planted a quick kiss on her forehead. She squeezed her eyes shut, savoring that rare moment of intimacy while forcing tears away. She knew that Fillmore could take care of himself… but she couldn't risk putting him in the way of whatever Canton had planned. She needed to stay away from him. She needed to run. He pulled away from her and squeezed her shoulders once more before jogging down the hall to the HQ.

Ingrid lingered at her spot in the empty hallway and she swore her heartbeat was echoing off the lockers around her.

 _Think Third._ She took a deep breath in as she recalled what Fillmore told her in the elevator: _"He ran X's underground… he probably still has a lot of connections around here."_ She looked around, keeping an eye out for anything out of the ordinary and her eyes fell on the security cameras. _He's probably got eyes everywhere. You need to get out of here._ She started to walk towards the HQ for her things but stopped. _No. They'll stop you. You have spare keys in your locker. Get them and go._ She turned and ran, keeping her destination in the front of her mind. _Don't look back. Draw Canton away from here._

Minutes passed and one floor later, she was in front of her locker, spinning the knob and opening the door and something fell out at her feet. She jumped back, adrenaline pumping at full speed. She eyed the folded piece of paper sealed with red candle wax cautiously. Still catching her breath from the jog, she looked down each end of the hallway for anyone who might have left it. Seeing no one, she looked back down at it and her gut screamed at her: _Don't look at it. Run. Don't look back. It's probably a trap._

But the detective in her reached down and picked it up, trailing her finger over the seal – the letter "B". Her heart skipped a beat… but she took a breath and slid her finger gingerly underneath the flap and peeled the seal away. It was handwriting she didn't recognize but didn't expect to. _East Wing Gymnasium. 8:30._ She looked at her watch – 8:23. It was on the other side of the school, but she could make it if she ran.

 _Don't. Trap. Run._

She took a shaky breath before making her decision. She snatched her keys from the hook at the back of the locker and shoved them in her pocket before slamming her locker shut and running off.

xXxXx

Fillmore entered the patrol room and headed straight for Vallejo's office. He had no idea how he was going to explain what just went down without causing panic, but Ingrid would be right behind him – she could help fill in the blanks. He didn't bother knocking before bursting in and shutting the door behind him. Bishop, Anza, Tehama, and Vallejo all looked in his direction as he entered, their expressions vaguely grim.

"Vallejo, we've got a problem."

He nodded. "You're damn right we do." Fillmore paused; that hadn't been the response he was expecting. Karen stood up, sketchpad in hand, and revealed the sketch on the front page.

Wade Canton.

Fury flared in Fillmore's chest at the sight of that bastard, but then he remembered what he was there to tell them. And Vallejo would not be happy about it.

"Yeah, I know," he admitted, running his hand over his bald head. The four in front of him stared at him in shock.

"You know?" Bishop asked with crossed arms while Vallejo watched Fillmore warily, waiting for the explanation.

Fillmore nodded. "Yeah. Ingrid just told me."

The glare Vallejo sent Fillmore was cringe-worthy.

" _Ingrid_ just told you?" he asked, walking around his desk and towards the detective. His glare intensified and his voice rose with every word he spoke. "And how the hell did she know? _When_ did she know?"

"After we talked to Ramone-"

Vallejo froze a foot in front of him. "She knew this _yesterday?_ "

"She thought she was imagining things, Vallejo," Fillmore explained, squaring his shoulders towards the fuming Commissioner, but did his best to keep a level head. The last thing they all needed was tension in the force. "You need to take a step back." They were eye level now and the space between them was decreasing when Anza stepped in, trying to pry them away from each other.

"All right ladies, let's take it down a notch."

"Are you telling me she withheld evidence on a high-threat level case because she thought her old boyfriend might be involved?"

Hearing those words, something in Fillmore's chest snapped. The air in the room thickened with heavy tension as the four watched his expression grow dark, each one of them regretting the words that left the commissioner's mouth. Anza grabbed Fillmore by the shirt and pushed him away right before he tried to lunge at Vallejo.

"Fillmore, don't!"

"Don't you dare call him that!" Fillmore shouted, pointing an accusing finger towards his superior. The room fell silent, stunned by his sudden display of aggression. Anza let go of Fillmore's shirt and Fillmore pushed him away, but he didn't make any moves towards Vallejo, who was watching him warily. Granted, he was the boss, but Fillmore's fury terrified him. He never wanted to be on the receiving end of that, and to this day, he had been lucky enough to avoid it. He wanted to keep it that way.

Fillmore's fists were balled at his sides and he began to wonder where she was. "She's been running herself into the ground for the last twenty-four hours trying to make sure that she wasn't gonna lead us on a wild goose chase because she might have just been paranoid." Fillmore pointed towards the door. "She's out there right now trying to pull herself together because we just confirmed what she was most afraid of." Vallejo's demeanor softened as the detective spoke and everyone's eyes were fixed on Fillmore. "And now we've got bigger problems."

Anza raised his eyebrow. "What could possibly be bigger than this?"

Fillmore ignored his question and instead looked to Bishop who was standing close to Vallejo, ready to block Fillmore from swinging at the teenager if necessary. "Care to explain the significance of the ides of March, Bishop?"

Bishop shrugged. "That's the day they killed Caesar. Why?"

"And what day was that?" Fillmore asked. Everyone turned to Bishop, whose face suddenly paled as he came to the same revelation Ingrid did.

"Today."

Silence fell like a blanket over the room as that revelation sank in. Vallejo turned to Fillmore.

"Where is Ingrid?"

xXxXx

Ingrid pushed through the doors, sending an echo through the deserted gymnasium. The stench of stale sweat and old basketballs washed over her and she grimaced. This gym had been "awaiting renovation" for about two years now; in the meantime, it served as a storage room for all of X's damaged or spare athletic equipment. She walked towards the center of the court and glanced at her watch. She was only a couple minutes early. Turning on her heel, she took in her surroundings: cobwebs hung from the ceiling, slightly swaying with the breeze which came through when she opened the doors. The stadium seats were covered in a thick layer of dust and transparent tarps were spread out haphazardly over some of the leftover equipment, with dead insects scattered on the floor around her.

That's when she noticed the footprints in the dust.

They were barely noticeable; if it hadn't been for the light coming in from the exit on the far side of the gym, she wouldn't have seen them. She followed them with her eyes first and they stopped at a door to her left. Her heartbeat echoed off the walls as she took a deep breath. She slowly placed her feet onto the existing footsteps, one foot in front of the other, agonizingly slow.

Anything could be behind that door. Any _one._ Ingrid tried to still her shaking hands as she got closer to the door. She was mere steps away when the intercom above her head clicked on. She froze mid-step as a low, gravelly voice bellowed through the speakers.

" _Beware the ides of March."_

Ingrid gasped as the fear swept over her like a tidal wave as she looked at her watch again: 8:29. _It's happening. Run._ She started to head for exit door to the east lot when she heard a faint beep, stopping her in her tracks once more. She looked back towards the door she had been heading for and she listened for it again: _beep._ _beep. beep._ She reached for the doorknob, twisted it, and peeked inside.

All she saw was a timer, but she knew. Her heart plummeted to her feet as she watched the number decrease. _Fourteen seconds. Thirteen. Twelve._

She slammed the door and ran, nearly slipping in the dust as she made a break for it. She fell through the gymnasium doors, pure dread surging through her as the countdown continued in her head. _Eleven. Ten. Nine_

She sprinted down the hallway in the direction that she came, spying the small red box on the wall halfway between her and her escape. _Eight. Seven. Six._

She wasn't going to get out in time. But she could give everyone else a chance.

 _Five._

She reached the alarm and pulled down. _Four._ Warning bells screamed above her head.

 _Three._ She sprinted towards the doors.

 _Two._

xXxXx

"Someone tell me they know how the _hell_ someone hacked the intercom system!" Vallejo bellowed into the now scrambling patrol room. The five had poured out of his office after the threatening announcement. There was no doubt that Appleton was on his way and Vallejo wanted to have something to give him.

"O'Farrell!" he shouted towards the redhead typing rapidly on his computer. "Talk to me!"

Fillmore quickly scanned the room for Ingrid. His terror grew when she was nowhere in sight. _Where could she be?_ He would have thought she'd have run straight in when the intercom had been hijacked. Panic ripped through his chest and he headed towards the exit to find her when the fire alarm shrieked, causing everyone to cover their ears. Vallejo circled around, hoping to make eye contact with anyone who could have an answer for him.

Seconds later, the lights flickered and the room shook, accompanied with the sound of an explosion coming from the other side of the building. Gasps and shouts sounded throughout the headquarters as patrollers were knocked off balance and stumbled to the floor, some catching themselves on nearby desks, and some catching each other.

Fillmore caught himself on Ingrid's desk, hardly noticing the commotion around him as he zeroed in on Ingrid's still-hot cup of coffee, sitting patiently on its warmer and absorbing the chunks of ceiling tile that fell into it. His heart twisted painfully in his chest as he registered what was happening and the fact that his best friend was still missing.

 _She can't be…_

 **xXxXx**

 **TBC… Next Friday! Please review and let me know how upset you are that I left you with such an AWFUL cliffhanger!**


	5. Between Heartbeats

**Happy Thanksgiving everyone! And here we are… the final chapter. This chapter and the previous chapter were originally split into four different chapters but as I was splitting them up into their respective separate documents for posting, I looked back on them and thought… I didn't want to be** _ **that**_ **cruel. I've left you guys waiting long enough. That being said, I do have ideas for other Fillmore! fanfics, but I'm not gonna make any promises about posting any time soon because I don't want to set myself up for failure once again… so keep an eye out in the next few weeks or months; hopefully we'll all be pleasantly surprised and I'll have something new for you guys.**

 **Review response to guest Nyeh: Thank you so much for reviewing! It means the world to me. I have anxiety and have had plenty of panic attacks that have sent me to the ER. I tried to capture my experiences along with experiences from some of my friends all in one go and I was afraid that I either under- or overdid it so thank you for telling me that. I really needed that reassurance! Keep an eye out for me in the future. I really hope I won't disappoint everyone again by not publishing ANYTHING EVER AGAIN haha xD**

 **Also, S/O to Queen S of Randomness for being such a faithful friend, reader, and reviewer. You've been here since literally the beginning and I feel like you were one of the sole motivators to get me to update. Like I remember last week I was like, "Nah, it's like way too late" but then I remembered that you were waiting… Didn't want to disappoint. So thank you for motivating me to stay on time haha!**

 **xXxXx**

 **Chapter Five – Between Heartbeats**

 **xXxXx**

Screams and shouts erupted throughout the school from students and teachers alike as the building shook around them. The brute force of the blast deactivated the fire alarms and threw X High School into darkness; every source of light was replaced by the emergency lights glowing ominously at the end of each hallway and in each classroom. Fillmore barely registered the sounds of the far away cries of fear and panic as he pushed himself up off of Ingrid's desk and ran towards the window. His jaw dropped in sync with his stomach. There was a crater in the east side of the building where the abandoned gym was – rather, had been. Fillmore's stomach churned and nausea swept over him as he watched smoke billow from the hole and rise in the sky. Flames flickered in between the wisps of smoke.

"Everybody, don't panic!" Vallejo shouted as the patrollers helped each other to their feet and started to feed off of the fear settling over the thousands of people in the building. Every officer looked to their leader who was standing in the front of the room, peering over them. "We follow the safety protocol. Grab your belts and stay in groups. Be smart, stay safe, and regroup on the quad." Vallejo met Fillmore's eyes. "No heroics." Officers were already banding together and making their way out the door before the Commissioner had even finished, while Fillmore stared speechless at their superior.

"Ingrid's still out there, Vallejo," Tehama stated simply, moving to Fillmore's side at the window and touching his arm comfortingly. He looked down at her, silently thanking her for speaking for him when he couldn't.

Anza stepped up. "This is all about her, boss." Fillmore watched him approach and stand at his other side. "Chances are, that blast was meant for her." A sharp pain struck Fillmore in the chest at his words and his mind flew to the worst possible scenario… He squeezed his eyes shut tight to clear that from his mind. _Not Ingrid. She's okay._

She had to be.

"I said, 'no heroics'," Vallejo repeated sternly, stepping aside to let other patrollers pass. He walked to the shelf closest to the door which held all the walkie talkies, which probably hadn't been used in weeks. They watched him grab four of them and set them down on Fillmore's desk in front of them. "So don't do anything stupid." He shot Fillmore a sympathetic nod. "Especially you." Fillmore silently nodded at him, still struggling to find words to say, while Vallejo picked up one of the walkies and switched it on.

"I'll be on emergency channel three so keep me posted," he said, pointing the antenna at each one of them as he spoke. "Put your belts on and watch each other's sixes. Ingrid's one of us, but so are each of you. I want _all_ of you safe on the quad within the hour. Got it?"

The three of them nodded. Karen and Anza each grabbed a walkie and rushed towards their desks to get their bright orange belts, which were now only used for special events: drills, fights, chaperone duties, or… worse. Neither Vallejo nor Fillmore budged, eyes locked as Fillmore tried to find words to say.

"Vallejo, I-" Vallejo interrupted him by holding up his hand.

"Don't worry about it, Fillmore," he assured him. Fillmore set his jaw and took a deep breath. "Go find your partner." Fillmore nodded as Vallejo turned on his heel and retreated out the door.

"You okay, man?" Fillmore looked over at Anza, donning his belt with his walkie attached to his hip. His gaze shifted over to Karen who walked up next to her partner and was watching him sympathetically. He looked between them and a part of him ached. Would he and Ingrid ever be standing side by side again?

 _Don't do that, Fillmore._ He rubbed his hand over his eyes and reached into his bottom drawer, pulling out the orange piece of fabric and stared at it for a brief moment.

"Fillmore?" Karen asked softly, stepping towards him.

 _Go find her._ He told himself as he pulled the belt over his head. It felt foreign to him… it had been months since he had worn it. It was the night of _A Christmas Carol_ \- his last security detail with Ingrid – where he'd been knocked unconscious trying to get the actors out of the way of the backdrop. He had woken up in the ambulance with Ingrid at his side, who masked her worry with seasoned wisecracks. She squeezed his hand as he started to wake back up. _"You just had to steal the show, didn't you?"_

He pushed that thought to the back of his mind. _Bring her back safe._ He switched on his walkie talkie, clipped it to his back pocket, and looked up at his two friends who watched him carefully.

"Let's go get her."

xXxXx

Pounding. Ringing. Pain.

 _But pain is good_. _You're alive._ The air was thick; it coated her lungs as she struggled to breathe, causing her chest to tighten _._ Ingrid winced and peeled her eyes open, but everything was blurry. Her vision pulsed along with the throbbing of her head. She saw her right arm stretched away from her and she lifted her hand, trying to find the source of her pain. Well, the source of _some_ of it. She brought her fingers to her temple but she could hardly feel her fingertips against her skin.

She coughed violently, turning her face into the rubble-covered floor beneath her, pain shooting through her chest and stomach. Blood spurted from her mouth onto the ash-covered tile floor and she cringed as the pressure increased in her skull. _That can't be good._ Turning her face into the ground again, ignoring the fact that it felt like someone were using her head as a drum, she put her arm underneath her and started to push herself up when she felt the full weight of something heavy pinning the bottom half of her body down. She struggled to turn her body enough to see what it was.

Her head pounded harder and harder with each movement, eyes clouding, but she felt whatever it was shift as she adjusted. She tried to put her left arm underneath her to push herself up when pain shot down her arm from her shoulder and she cried out. She dropped back to the ground as she fell into another violent coughing fit. Ingrid groaned in agony as the coughing subsided once more and she buried her face in the rubble.

Suddenly, after shifting once more, she felt something stabbing the top of her leg close to her hip. With a shaking hand, she reached for it and pulled it out of her pocket. Her fingers stopped working momentarily and she dropped it, barely registering the sound of it jingling as it hit the ground. _Keys?_ She flicked them weakly with her fingers to confirm their existence. _To what?_ On cue, her photographic memory kicked in to fill in the blanks.

 _She took a shaky breath before making her decision. She snatched her keys from the hook at the back of the locker and shoved them in her pocket before slamming her locker shut and running off_.

Car. She felt around for the keychain and brought it close to her face, squinting at it carefully in effort to bring it into focus. _Where_ is _my car?_ She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to jog her photographic memory once more. _East lot. Always._ She opened her eyes.

 _And where am_ I _?_

Fragments came back to her: the letter in her locker; running; the dusty gym. _East wing._

The bomb.

Fillmore had to be worried sick. Her mind swam with memories and guilt. _All my fault._

She swallowed dryly and brought the key fob towards her face, running her thumb over the buttons. _Maybe I'm close enough…_ She pressed down on what she hoped was the red panic button and waited to hear the alarm from her trusty Monte Carlo, but all she could hear was the relentless ringing in her ears. She let go of her keys and slowly brought her hand, trembling with effort, to her ear and felt something wet _._

 _Gotta get out of here._ She tried to kick away whatever was pinning her legs down, but gave up as the corners of her eyes started to blacken. She squeezed her eyes shut as her stomach leapt and churned with nausea, making her gag. _Maybe I'll just rest for now,_ she thought as the darkness closed in on her. _I'll move that later_.

xXxXx

"We don't even know for sure that she was near the blast, Fillmore," Anza tried to reassure him. The three officers weaved their way through the myriad of students and teachers who were all doing their best to stifle their panic – Fillmore included – as they rushed towards the nearest exits. He wordlessly led the couple forward through the crowd.

"He's right, Fillmore," Tehama agreed, trailing behind the both of them. "She could have just gone somewhere to clear her head." Fillmore shook his head. Despite that small voice in his head that had been trying to convince him of that same thing, Fillmore knew deep in his gut that the universe wasn't that fair.

"Ingrid's too reprehensive and Canton knows that," he explained, dodging a group of crying freshmen. "He knows the second she realizes that she's to blame, she'll throw herself in the line of fire before she'll let anyone else get hurt." The came to the end of the hallway and Fillmore burst through the doors, leading them down the empty staircase. "He led her there. I'm sure of it."

"But she was only out of your sight for what? Ten, maybe fifteen minutes?" Tehama asked, passing her partner on the stairs and joining Fillmore in front of them in the now empty hallway. "How could he have gotten to her between the last you saw her and the explosion?"

He shook his head. "I don't _know_ ," he snapped, not at her, but at himself. He should have sensed that something was wrong when she hadn't walked in after him. He should have gone to look for her. It couldn't be a coincidence that Ingrid had disappeared within the time it took to set off a bomb. His gut churned at the thought. "She's there. I can feel it."

Anza spoke up, "You don't know-"

"Stop trying to convince me I'm wrong!" Fillmore shouted, stopping dead in his tracks and turning to face him. They both froze midstep at his sudden outburst. Fillmore threw his arm in the direction of the gym, "The only person that Canton is after is _her_! He knew he only had one shot to get even so he sure as hell wasn't gonna set that bomb off without her near it!" His throat tightened as the devastating possibility of Ingrid being dead started to settle like a boulder in his stomach.

Karen lifted her hand to his arm, hoping to bring him some comfort, but he pulled his arm away and started to take off in the opposite direction. "Fillmore-"

"The longer we sit here the longer it's gonna take to find her," he spat without meeting their eyes. He pushed through the door and left the stairwell with the two hot on his heels. The faint smell of smoke lingered in the air; they were getting close. "And the longer it takes to find her, the more likely we are to find her dead." Those words tasted sour on his tongue and he bit back the urge to gag. This couldn't be happening. It had to be a dream.

" _Hey!_ "

Fillmore spun around and watched helplessly as Karen marched towards him and slapped him across the face. Anza stepped forward as Fillmore brought his hand up to his cheek and stared down at the enraged teenager in front of him in shock; she had never slapped _anyone_ before, let alone one of her friends.

"Don't you _dare_ talk like that Cornelius Fillmore!" she shouted, pointing an accusing finger in his face. Her voice was strong but heavy with emotion as her eyes welled with tears but she continued speaking forcefully. "I know that you're scared and I know that she's your best friend but if you start talking like she's dead then you really don't know her at all." Fillmore scowled down at her but didn't – rather, couldn't – speak. A lump had returned in his throat preventing him from saying anything.

Anza tried to step in between them, grabbing her by the arm to try and stop her. "Karen-"

She pulled her arm out of his grasp and continued, "Canton wouldn't set off the fire alarm if he wanted to make sure Ingrid was around when the blast went off," she continued, her voice softening as she looked into Fillmore's burdened eyes which were watching her warily. "It _had_ to have been Ingrid."

It hadn't even occurred to Fillmore that it could very well have been his partner who set off the alarm in a futile attempt to warn everyone. The thought hit him square in the gut like a bowling ball and he felt a small spark of hope ignite in his chest.

"She might be hurt, but she got out," Karen continued, grabbing his hand and giving it a reassuring squeeze. "I'm sure of it."

Outside of the building, a car alarm started blaring, making the three officers look around in confusion. Anza picked up his walkie and hit the talk button. "Vallejo, it's Anza. Do you copy?"

There was a pause before the talkie crackled to life. The car alarm sounded louder through the walkie talkie. " _Loud and clear_ ," Vallejo answered. " _I take it you found her?_ "

"No, but we're almost to the gym," Anza denied. "What the hell is that noise?"

Another pause. " _That's Ingrid's car alarm. You didn't set it off?_ "

The three officers shared a sigh of relief and a weight was lifted off their chests. Fillmore picked up his walkie and spoke into it.

"Ingrid must have."

The three took off towards the gym. They turned the corner into the long, narrow hallway leading to the gym and bolted towards the end; all three were wary of a thin layer of smoke seeping through the doors at the end and gathering at the ceiling.

Fillmore's heart pounded in his chest as they got closer to the doors. _She's okay. She's alive. She's going to be okay._

He burst through the doors into oblivion.

Smoke billowed past him and burned his eyes and he slowed down, taking in the surroundings. Ingrid's car alarm sounded louder now but hardly loud enough to be heard over the faint crackling of fire. Two lights flickered to life behind him – Anza and Tehama's flashlights – illuminating the destruction under their feet and he pulled his own flashlight off his belt and turned it on, pointing it up. A part of the ceiling had caved in a few feet in front of them and the floor around them was littered with ash and rubble. Fillmore looked for the entrance to the gym; about a hundred feet in front of them on their right. One of its large red doors had been blown off its hinges and was lying near the wall across from it. A stale breeze was floating through the space where the door used to be.

Karen called out Ingrid's name while they scanned the area with their flashlights, looking for any sign of their pale-skinned colleague as her name echoed off the walls. Ingrid's car alarm silenced in the distance, sending chills down Fillmore's spine. The corridor was thrown into an eerie silence. He coughed to clear out the coating of smoke in his lungs and headed towards the gym entrance and he started to head toward it when Anza grabbed him by the arm.

"Did you hear that?" he asked. The three went silent as they tried to listen for the sound that grabbed his attention. A pregnant pause engulfed them before they heard it again: a quiet gasp. Fillmore's head shot over to his left and his eyes fell on a pale hand in the ashes.

" _Ingrid."_

His partner, his best friend, lied face down in the rubble, unmoving. He rushed over to her and, with a renewed strength, pulled the entrance door – which was pinning her to the floor from the waist down – up and off of her. It landed flat on the linoleum ground behind her with a reverberating crash and Anza joined him at his side, running his hands over Ingrid's body to look for any obvious injuries.

"Vallejo, we found her," Tehama called out on her walkie talkie. "Send an ambulance to exit H."

Fillmore brushed Ingrid's raven hair from her face with a shaking hand and fear struck him in the chest as he watched blood seep from a cut just above her left eye and pool into a small puddle on the floor under her head. Another small trail of blood trickled from her mouth which he wiped away with his thumb before holding her face gently in his hands.

"Come back to me, mama," he whispered to her, resting his forehead softly against the side of her head, wiping away the blood that trailed from her ear. He tapped her cheek with his fingers, silently begging her to open her eyes.

"They've got an ambulance coming to meet us at the exit," Tehama said, approaching Fillmore's side and watching Anza. "Let's get her out of here." Her partner had his fingers to Ingrid's left wrist, which was resting, bent, at her side, and his eyes grew wide. He spoke quietly.

"I can't find her pulse."

Fillmore's heart shot out of his chest and his head snapped up at the boy next to him, a wild look in his dark eyes as he met Anza's. Tehama gasped behind them and took a step back, covering her mouth in shock. The severity of that statement sucked what little was left of the air out of the hallway, blanketing the trio in a moment of silent panic.

Fillmore stared back down at his broken partner with tears burning in his eyes; at her burned black t-shirt, her matted hair, her bleeding forehead, then at the wrist which apparently lacked a pulse. In one fluid moment, he snaked his arm around her and turned her over towards him and onto her back, much to the protests from his friends. She was limp in his arms like a tattered rag doll but he held her chest close to his ear, desperately listening for the beat of her heart.

"Fillmore, is she breathing?" Karen whimpered behind him. He kept his ear against her chest and tried to separate the rapid beating of his own heart from hers. _Don't leave me, Ingrid._ A tear fell from his eyes and onto her chest.

"Is she breathing?" she repeated.

They heard a muffled voice behind them as the sound of sirens approached from the exit at the end of the hallway.

"I wouldn't count on it."

Fillmore stiffened, while Anza's eyes widened and he heard Tehama cry out and back away with fear. Anza shot up from his spot on the floor and pulled her behind him. With a hand behind her head, Fillmore slowly lowered Ingrid down to the floor and stood up.

Upon turning around, he faced the barrel of a gun held by none other than Wade Canton himself. Fillmore's jaw clenched with a mixture of adrenaline and rage as they stared each other down. Canton pulled the damp bandana down from his nose and mouth to reveal a vengeful snarl.

Without breaking eye contact, Fillmore spoke to his friends: "You two get Ingrid out of here."

Anza stared at him incredulously. " _Fillmore-_ "

" _Get her out of here,_ " he repeated while Canton shook his head and smirked at the boy, the red scar above his lip where Fillmore punched him months prior turning white as his smile grew.

"It's too late, belt," he growled, taking a step closer to Fillmore as Anza scooped Ingrid up carefully into his arms, despite Karen's faint protests. Fillmore heard him ordering Karen to get in front of him, followed by their retreating footsteps. Canton held the gun directly to Fillmore's chest. "They can't save her now." He heard Karen speaking frantically at the far end of the hall and the sirens grew louder.

"No one can save you either," Fillmore threatened, his voice dangerously low.

Canton scoffed. "Save me from what, prison?" He cocked the weapon and pushed it harder into Fillmore's chest. "You think I'm afraid of prison?"

"Not from prison." Fillmore shook his head. "From me."

Tehama and Anza, who was carrying an unconscious Ingrid in his arms, neared the exit just as the emergency unit pulled up outside of the doors. Karen burst through them, trembling with fear, now face to face with the EMTs exiting their ambulance with a stretcher. Anza followed close behind her and she pulled one of the EMTs aside.

"You have to get the police down here," Tehama blurted, her voice shaking with adrenaline as Anza laid Ingrid down on the stretcher. The man stared down at her incredulously and tried to pull away to attend to Ingrid, but she held on tightly to his arm. "The bomber is _here,_ and he has a-"

A single shot rang out.

Everyone instinctively ducked and panic erupted. The EMTs strapped Ingrid down onto the gurney and rushed her into the ambulance while Anza grabbed Tehama and pulled her away from the entrance, kicking and screaming. Vallejo's voice was shouting from the walkie talkie on Anza's belt. More sirens approached and two more shots rang out from inside. Karen screamed.

" _Fillmore!"_

xXxXx

The light above the doors jumped from the number one up to number two, a heavy silence falling on the couple in the elevator. He had his hands shoved deep into his pockets and was staring at he and his friend's warped reflections in the metal doors in front of them. His signature leather jacket suddenly felt like a weighted blanket as the number changed again and they neared the holding cell block where the investigators were waiting for them.

"Are you sure you want to do it this way?" he asked tentatively, looking down at his partner, who didn't meet his eyes. "You got discharged less than an hour ago. Don't you think you should be taking it easy?"

Ingrid shrugged as best as she could with her left arm in a sling; the result of a dislocated shoulder. "And what about you?" she countered dryly, shooting Fillmore a sideways glance but not turning her head away from the doors. "You're the one who got shot."

Fillmore raised his eyebrow. "In the _arm._ You're the one who got _blown up_ ," he explained. "Besides, I shot him back and I've got better aim." She struggled to keep her breathing under control – partly because any level of heavy breathing made her chest throb, partly because she didn't want to lose her composure… at least not yet. A part of her knew there would be no holding back her emotions once this was all over, but she needed him to see her.

He needed to know that he lost.

"Ingrid?" Fillmore said softly, growing slightly concerned at her silence.

She gulped as the elevator dinged their arrival to the fourth floor and the doors slid open to reveal a bustling office space of badge-wielding officers much like their own at the school.

"I just want him to see me," she admitted. This confession shook her – she hated the idea of seeing him again – so she took Fillmore's hand in her own, who in turn gave it a comforting squeeze. They walked out of the elevator together and looked around for Detective Lyons, who was leaning against a desk and rose at their entrance. She nodded towards Ingrid and sent her a comforting smile.

"I'm glad you're healing up well," she said and held a hand out to her right. "The observation room is this way." Fillmore and Ingrid followed close behind her as she led them to the room. An observations tech sat at the control panel directly to the right of the door, who nodded at them as they entered. The room was completely dark, only dimly lit by the light from the empty room on the opposite side of the glass. It wouldn't be empty for long.

Lyons shut the door behind them and Ingrid stood in front of the two-way mirror. "Are you ready for this, Ingrid?" she asked. Ingrid paused, took a deep breath and then nodded, not removing her eyes from the other side of the glass. Lyons nodded and took her phone out of her pocket, typing a few words in. Fillmore looked down at his partner, who had paled significantly since they stepped out of the elevator. She may seem ready on the outside, but he knew by the iron grip she had on his hand that she was nowhere near truly ready for what was about to come. He began to wonder if she ever could be.

"They're coming in," Lyons said.

Ingrid's chest tightened as door in the other room opened and a man in a suit stepped aside to let him in. In a moment of pure panic, Ingrid squeezed her eyes shut. She heard the them shuffle in and her breath hitched tightly in her chest. Fillmore squeezed her hand tighter and didn't take his eyes off of her.

"You can do this, mama," he whispered to her.

She held his hand tighter, fighting the panic in her chest. Maybe she wasn't ready for this. Maybe it was too soon. _But you need to do this, Ingrid. He can't hurt you from in here._ She heard the clanking of locking handcuffs as the detective on the other side spoke to him, warming him up for the shock of his life. _You can do this._

She opened her eyes.

Wade Canton stared blankly at the mirror in front of him, not knowing that he was staring straight through the girl he thought he killed. His short blond hair was greasy and unkempt. A white bandage peeked out from the collar of his orange jumpsuit, no doubt hiding the bullet hole Fillmore put in his shoulder. His eyes were dull, but he seemed satisfied… content.

 _Not for long._

"I'm ready."

Fillmore ran his thumb along hers in a final attempt to comfort her as Lyons nodded and tapped on the window twice with her knuckles. Canton looked up at the window in curiosity while the detective behind him smirked mischievously. "You've got someone who wants to see you," he quipped. He was enjoying this way too much. Ingrid's heart pounded uncontrollably in her chest and she squeezed Fillmore's hand even harder. Lyons paused to give Ingrid one final moment to prepare herself before switching the light on.

Canton's green eyes grew wide like saucers when he saw the pair behind the glass before a scowl formed on his face. A vein suddenly popped out of his forehead and he shot up from his chair, but the cuffs chaining him to the table prevented him from lunging.

Ingrid didn't even flinch. But while she kept a straight face, her grip on Fillmore's hand strengthened and her teeth punctured her cheek.

" _No_ ," Wade snarled, malice dripping from his teeth. His entire body shook with rage as he fought his restraints, unnerving the detective standing guard behind him. A small circle of blood appeared on his jumpsuit on his shoulder, slowly growing as he fought to break free. "I _killed_ you." The table, which was bolted to the floor, creaked in opposition. Ingrid's entire body went rigid with a mix of adrenaline and fear at the sound. _He can't escape. You're safe._

Ingrid's eyes snapped to the control panel to her right, just past her partner. She let go of Fillmore's hand, she stepped over to it, and pressed the talk button, despite the protests from the observation tech.

"Better luck next time, bitch."

Canton screamed obscenities as he fought against his restraints in unadulterated rage. Fillmore stepped towards Ingrid defensively but she stoically backed away towards the door, not removing her eyes from the flailing boy on the other side of the glass. She sucked on the source of the copper taste filling her mouth as she opened the door, keeping the unaffected façade plastered on her face. But the moment she was out of his sight, she bolted. A mixture of panic and relief washed over her like a tidal wave as she fled. But the contradictory emotions overwhelmed her, causing her to stop dead in her tracks just a few feet away from the elevators she and her partner had taken to get up here only minutes ago.

Canton's hands simultaneously beat the hell out of her and groped her lustfully as she heard him off in the distance shouting vile threats in her direction. Her palm stung. Her head throbbed. Her chest ached. His voice sounded too far away to warrant any worry of danger, but every violent memory blurred together on the elevator door in front of her. _He'll always come after you,_ the rational side of her brain convinced her. _He's relentless. Driven. You'll never be safe._

Tears cascaded freely down her face and she backed away from the elevator as the doors opened and freed the people inside. They all poured out, completely disregarding the trembling girl in front of them. _You have to run,_ her thoughts swirled. _He's going to come for you._

Panic surged through her once more and she turned to run towards the staircase when a strong hand grabbed her firmly by the waist. She gasped – a mixture of shock and pain – as it quickly led her to the open elevator. _Too late too late too late-_ She tried to pull away from his grip as he guided her into the elevator and backed her into the corner, holding her by the shoulders.

"Ingrid _stop_."

Fillmore stood before her, staring intently down at her with pleading brown eyes. She moved her mouth to speak, but when her eyes met his, no sound came out. She didn't notice people entering the elevator with them or the stares she received when they noticed the two friends in the corner or the pain pulsing through her as she held back sobs. She looked into Fillmore's warm, reassuring eyes and the world around her fell away, but the fear in her chest remained.

"He's-" she started to say weakly, and Fillmore brushed her hair out of her watery eyes. She swallowed the lump in her throat which was threatening to choke her with every fleeting moment. Canton's hands made their way to her throat, but she managed to mutter: "He's never going to stop."

Fillmore didn't hesitate to pull her into his arms and hold her tight. Her still-healing body screamed in protest but she grabbed a handful of his shirt in her uninjured hand and held on tight, burying her face into his chest. He rested his chin on the top of her head and she focused on his heart beating steadily in his chest. The memory of Canton's hands violating her began to fade away as she listened _thump-thump. Thump-thump._

"Ingrid, I know you're scared," he whispered to her, bringing his head down close to her ear. His breath was warm on her cheek and she relished the wave of warmth it sent through her body. He pressed his cheek firmly to the side of her head. "And I know that…" he paused and she felt his Adam's apple shift as he swallowed hard against her forehead. When he spoke up again, his voice was much softer… and his words were much heavier, dripping with guilt. "I know I failed you once." His hand ran through her hair and lingered at the base of her neck. "But I swear to you, he won't hurt you again."

She shook her head in denial against his chest, but all of the words she wanted to say to him escaped her. She wanted to say, _Don't you dare, Cornelius Fillmore. You came for me. You fought for me. You risked your_ life _for me. You have_ never _failed me, not once._ But those words never reached her lips. Instead, she focused again on his heartbeat, trying to match hers with his as she forced herself to keep breathing.

Fillmore had held her in his arms more times than she had cared to count through the entire time they had known each other… And the majority of those moments happened within the span of the past few weeks. After initially waking up and learning Fillmore had been admitted into the hospital for smoke inhalation and a superficial _gunshot_ wound of all things, she had woken up from the sedative to find him asleep next to her in the ICU, clad in an oxygen tank and scrubs of his own with his arm around her. He was next to her every moment that he'd been able to. And each moment that he held her close, she grew increasingly aware of how much she had grown attached to him. She counted on him for his strength, his comfort, just as he did for hers. She knew that whenever she was with him that she was safe – he had proven that to her over and over again. She gripped his shirt tighter in her fist and buried her face further into his chest, begging herself to say something, anything, to reassure him that she didn't blame him. He squeezed her a little tighter in his arms and she found herself dreading the moment when he would let her go. Her heart ached as she remembered how close she had come to living a life without him – a life where he wouldn't be there to hold her – as he planted a long, tender kiss to her temple.

Her heart dropped into her stomach. They had shared more intimate moments in the past few weeks than they had throughout their entire time together. She turned her head to rest her ear over her best friend's heart, listening to it softly beat to her. In between each heartbeat, her photographic memory played back every embrace; the way her chest fluttered every time they made eye contact; how her stomach dropped every time he walked into the squad room wearing that damn leather jacket of his; and how, every time he softly spoke her name, she forgot how to breathe. And for the first time in two months, she was thankful for a memory that remembered every moment… because those were the memories she never wanted to forget.

Fillmore's hand stroked her back and she drew in a wavering breath, savoring the feeling of his hand gliding across her skin. She silently begged him to never let him go, but only three words wanted to cross her lips.

But she remained silent; now wasn't the time to say how she felt, even if she _did_ know how to say it. She just knew that she couldn't imagine going back to being "just partners", because she finally knew where she belonged: in between his heartbeats.

 **xXxXx xXxXx xXxXx**

 **THE END**

 **xXxXx xXxXx xXxXx**

 **Thank you so much for reading! I'm sorry that it took so long for me to get this finished and out there for you guys. I appreciate your patience. I hope that I made up for it! I really enjoyed diving into this plot and all the nights staying up until three a.m. perfecting it for you all. Stay tuned! You never know what might show up in the Fillmore! archive ;)**

 **Much much love,**

 **Ellameno**

 **P.S. Also I hope the ending wasn't too cheesy. This entire sequel was inspired by that last sentence… the moment I just so happened to string those words together, I instantly knew I had to write more. I'm cheesy af and I don't care who knows it… so fight me.**


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